SOCIALIST CLOTHING COMPANY FOUNDER CREATING MOST WANTED CEOS PLAYING CARDS IN WAKE OF UNITED HEALTHCARE SHOOTING

New York Post

 

Socialist clothing company founder creating disturbing ‘most wanted CEOs’ playing cards in wake of UnitedHealthcare shooting

By Chris Nesi

Published Dec. 15, 2024, 4:07 p.m. ET

 

The founder of a “socialist apparel” brand who has called online for the death of corporate executives is planning to sell a deck of cards of “most wanted CEOs” — complete with names and faces and decorated with illustrations of gun range targets.

 

Comrade Workwear founder James Harr announced the disturbing project just days after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was executed on the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

 

He said it was inspired by the “most-wanted Iraqi” playing card decks famously distributed to US and coalition forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq to help identify key targets in Saddam Hussein’s circle.

 

"Most wanted CEOs" playing cards, featuring a red gun range target of a human silhouette.

 

The reverse sides of each card will feature the name and image of a CEO on the front and a human silhouette gun range target, Harr said in social media posts.

 

That deck helped soldiers “find and do what they needed to do” to those depicted, said Harr, whose social accounts are loaded with anti-capitalism posts and images including one reading “the CEO must die.”

 

He then blithely rattles off numerous A-list CEOs — whom The Post is choosing not to name — to be included in the deck, asking his combined 109,000 followers between Instagram and TikTok to help come up with more.

 

The comment thread below the Instagram post was flooded with praise from followers, who threw out scores of suggestions for other potential targets to feature in the deck, with many pledging to buy it as soon as it’s available for purchase.

 

“Does it include addresses?” asked one commenter inquiring what information would be available on the cards.

 

“We need cards for good guys like Luigi [Mangione] too,” wrote another in reference to Thompson’s accused killer.

 

In a follow-up post on TikTok, Harr gleefully shows off preliminary design mock-ups of the deck, which he said will be separated into suits representing different industries.

 

What we know about the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson

 

Thompson was named CEO of UnitedHealth in April 2021. He joined the company in 2004. He was one of several senior executives at the company under investigation by the Department of Justice.

 

Thompson’s wife, Paulette, said her husband had been getting threats before he was killed.

 

Thompson’s shooting led to sick support online, and even spurred a tasteless lookalike competition in NYC.

 

A person of interest has been nabbed by police officers inside a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa.

 

The suspect has been identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md. He’s an Ivy League graduate who hated the medical community.

 

Follow along with The Post’s live updates on the news surrounding Brian Thompson’s murder.

 

Clubs, for instance, will include CEOs of pharmaceutical and chemical companies, Harr says in the video. Hearts will represent “things you need to survive” like retail and real estate; Diamonds will feature CEOs in “tech, finance and media” while spades will depict chief executives of companies involved in “oil and war.”

 

The reverse side of each card includes the words “most-wanted CEOs playing cards” and an image of a red human silhouette gun range target.

 

The cards’ obverse sides feature a black-and-white close-up of each CEO’s face, with their name and affiliation, along with QR codes under the heading “why they’re evil,” which Harr says will lead to dedicated web pages outlining their apparent sins.

 

In response to the Dec. 4 shooting, and following a grotesque wave of support for Mangione’s alleged actions, UnitedHealthcare and a number of other corporations have scrubbed the names of their top executives from their websites or marked their Wikipedia pages for deletion.

 

Meanwhile, private security firms that have provided services for Fortune 500 companies say they’ve been inundated with calls from new potential clients.

 

Reached via Instagram message Sunday evening, Harr insisted the deck of cards is not a call to violence.

 

“I’m not suggesting anyone should cause any physical harm to anyone but I do want people to know who is making their life harder, who is stealing from them, who is deciding that a couple more percentage points of profit is worth more than the life of your loved ones,” he told The Post.

AH: Here's an update.