An Instagram account called "3chordpolitics" posted a graphic of Flock Safety founder and CEO Garrett Langley with a black bar across his eyes, three bullets arranged beside his face, and the caption "Let's Downsize." The slogan underneath: "No CEO Left Behind."
If you're thinking that sounds like a hit poster, congratulations — you can read.
The post, which was still live on Instagram as of yesterday, deliberately invokes the Luigi Mangione killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year. Same aesthetic. Same implied message. Same cheerful suggestion that corporate executives deserve bullets. The only difference is this one's targeting was made public before it happens.
Flock Safety makes automated license plate recognition cameras and gunshot detection systems used by law enforcement agencies. That makes Langley a natural villain for the anarchist left — the guy who builds the tools law enforcement officials use to catch people. The "Let's Downsize" campaign isn't subtle about what "downsizing" means when you pair it with bullets and a dead CEO's ghost.
Now try a thought experiment. A conservative Instagram account posts a graphic of a Planned Parenthood CEO with a black bar over her eyes, three bullets, and a slogan about "downsizing." How many seconds before the FBI opens a case? How many cable news segments before lunch? How many op-eds about "stochastic terrorism" and "the dangerous rhetoric of the right"?
We all watched the same media apparatus spend four years blaming every act of violence on conservative speech. A rodeo clown wore an Obama mask and it was a national crisis. A garage-door pull rope at a NASCAR track triggered a federal hate-crime investigation. But an explicit, Mangione-referencing target graphic on a named CEO sits on Instagram through the morning news cycle and the content moderators are apparently on break.
Instagram's community guidelines specifically prohibit "threats that could lead to death" and "calls for violence against specific people." A graphic with bullets next to a named CEO's obscured face, captioned with a reference to a real assassination, would seem to check both boxes. But the enforcement of those guidelines has always been a one-way ratchet — post a meme the wrong people don't like, and you're gone in minutes. Post what amounts to a wanted poster from the left, and the algorithm barely blinks.
The broader pattern isn't new. Mangione became a folk hero on the left almost immediately. The merchandise. The fan accounts. The "he had a point" discourse from people who supposedly oppose gun violence. That cultural permission structure — where political violence against the right targets is treated as protest rather than crime — doesn't stay theoretical forever. It metastasizes into posts like this one, where a specific human being gets the crosshairs treatment and the platform that hosts it shrugs.
Three bullets, a name, and a slogan borrowed from an assassination. Still live on Instagram. The platform's guidelines say one thing. The platform's silence says something else entirely.