From Cancel Culture to Assassination Culture?

Authors: Abdu Murray

The August 27, 2025 mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis is revolting for many reasons. The victims were largely children in the midst of praying. The shooter had written a hate-filled manifesto and, chillingly, scrawled his hatred directly onto his weapons. He wanted everyone to know not only what he had done, but why.  

While mental illness played a role, political and social agendas were the fuel, making this atrocity the latest expression of what some are now calling an “assassination culture”—a disturbing “level-up” of cancel culture. Where cancel culture sought to erase voices and reputations through social pressure in the digital arena, assassination culture seeks to eradicate adversaries through violence in the physical world. 

We’ve already seen this trend take root. Consider Luigi Mangioni, who murdered Brian Thompson, the CEO of a major healthcare insurance company. Instead of universal condemnation, Mangioni achieved macabre celebrity status. Why? Because he murdered the “right” kind of person: the head of a healthcare insurance company. When Thompson’s family needed sympathy for their husband and father’s death, the public instead valorized the killer.  

When I first heard the story, my thoughts went immediately to Thompson’s wife and children. A year ago, my father was ripped from our lives by two murderers. It is unimaginably painful. I can’t imagine mourning his loss while others celebrate it. Thankfully I’ve received the love I needed. I wish I could say the same for Thompson’s family.  

Or take Elias Rodriguez, who fatally shot two Israeli consulate staff members, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., in May 2025. Witnesses reported that he removed his keffiyeh and shouted, “Free, free Palestine” as he was apprehended. He wrote that “[t]hose of us against the genocide take satisfaction in arguing that the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity.” For Rodriguez, murder became a megaphone. 

And, of course, consider the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, 2024. Immediately following, “#how’dyoumiss?” trended on X. Across various platforms, people responded to a mass shooting in America by lamenting that the death toll was too low. 

And now, the recent school shooter Robin Westman—etching his hate-filled epithets onto his weapons—literalized how we’ve equated identity and ideology. Assassination has become activism. Murder has become messaging. 

The post-truth world that elevates feelings and preferences above facts and truth has collapsed the distinction between a person’s ideas and their identity. And so, the social erasure of cancel culture has calcified into something darker. 

When people believe that bad ideas make people unworthy of their humanity, then what begins with hashtags and de-platforming can end with bullets and bombs. We label others what Susan Harding calls “the repugnant cultural other.” And why not cancel such subhumans by way of assassination? 

It is precisely at this point where ancient biblical truth about what it means to be human can heal our contemporary malady. “Thoughts and prayers” are common (and when sincere, appropriate) responses to such mass evil. Such sentiments are increasingly derided as impotent and performative. Action, not thoughts and prayers, is needed, critics say. Ironically, Mangioni, Rodriguez, and Westman acted out of their own twisted thoughts. This underscores that prayerful thoughts—properly ordered to God’s will—can lead to life-giving action. 

Among other things, prayer is about conforming our will to God’s will (Matthew 6:10). And God’s will is that we see others as of infinite worth because they are made in His image (Genesis 1:27). Unmoored from that objective standard for human value, we have made gods of ourselves and therefore justify eradicating any who dare to have other gods before us. But a prayerful return to God, as the objective source of value, will help us understand—even if we don’t agree with—each other. A stanza from Thomas Bracken’s poem “Not Understood” comes to mind: 

O, God! that men would see a little clearer, 

Or judge less harshly where they cannot see; 

O God! that men would draw a littler nearer 

To one another, they’d be nearer Thee, 

And understood. 

At a minimum, the imago Dei implies that while not all ideas have equal value, every person who holds those ideas does. The cross of Christ—where Jesus sacrificed Himself for the sake of those who hate him—is the antithesis of assassination culture. It is action that proceeds from thought. As we imitate Jesus, His self-sacrificial message will be etched on our very lives. Perhaps others will notice. Perhaps we will see each other as human again. 

This article was authored by Abdu Murray.