By Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lexi Alexander is facing backlash after responding to the murder of a 32-year-old Bank of America executive and new mother with a meme featuring Luigi Mangione, adding another episode to a growing debate over the left’s increasingly casual treatment of political violence.
Alexander, the German-Palestinian-American director of “Punisher: War Zone” and “Green Street Hooligans,” shared the image Tuesday after Erin Piacenti was identified as the woman stabbed to death in Times Square a day earlier. The meme showed Batman looking toward the bat-signal, except Mangione’s face had replaced the familiar symbol, according to The New York Post.
Mangione pleaded guilty last month to federal stalking charges connected to the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and admitted shooting him. His state murder case remains pending. The killing turned Mangione into a folk hero among parts of the online left, where his image has repeatedly been transformed into memes celebrating violence against corporate executives.
Piacenti’s killing had no known political motive, wrote multiple reports. Police described the attack as “random and unprovoked.”
Piacenti had just returned to work after five months of maternity leave when Pamela Cisneros attacked her near West 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue shortly before 4:30 p.m. Monday. Police said Cisneros first stabbed a 68-year-old man before plunging a kitchen knife into Piacenti’s abdomen.
Officers confronted Cisneros, who was carrying two knives. Police said she refused repeated commands to drop the weapons and advanced toward officers after an attempt to subdue her with a Taser failed. Two officers opened fire, killing her.
Authorities said Cisneros had a documented history of mental-health encounters with police. Investigators have found no indication that she targeted Piacenti because of her employment or political beliefs.
Piacenti was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where she died. She and her husband, Frank, had recently celebrated their second wedding anniversary and were raising a 5-month-old daughter. Piacenti graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Fordham University School of Law before eventually joining Bank of America’s business selection and conflicts unit.
“We are shocked and deeply saddened by the tragic loss of our colleague. She was a valued teammate who will be greatly missed. Our hearts go out to her family and all of her loved ones,” Bank of America said.
Rather than back away from her Mangione post as criticism mounted, Alexander accused her detractors of working on behalf of Israel.
“Hasbara bots out in full swing just like the first time we asked people to boycott BofA,” Alexander wrote.
She followed with another post tying the controversy to opposition to Bank of America over its dealings involving Israel.
Palestinian American film maker celebrates the murder of a random white lady who worked in middle management at Bank of America.
32,000 likes pic.twitter.com/f7e4wxd54b
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) September 1, 2026
“They released the hasbara bot farm just like the first time when we asked people to boycott Bofa. Israel doesn’t care about the woman who got killed, they care about the positive rating Bofa gave them in the middle of a genocide. There is huge money at stake.”
Alexander’s post does not make Piacenti’s murder political. But the willingness to turn the killing of another corporate employee into a Mangione joke fits a phenomenon researchers and New Conservative Post have been tracking for more than a year: political killing becoming increasingly acceptable as an online aesthetic among parts of the left, including by elected Democrats like Elizabeth Warren.
An April 2025 report from the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab described an emerging “assassination culture” in which violent memes and social-media communities normalize killing political and economic targets.
The researchers surveyed 1,264 Americans and found that 55.2 percent of respondents identifying as left of center said murdering President Donald Trump would be at least somewhat justified. Nearly 49 percent said the same about killing Elon Musk. The researchers specifically identified support for Mangione as strongly associated with support for other forms of political violence. The report cautioned that violent attitudes also existed among Republicans, though its survey found significantly greater support among left-of-center respondents.
The rhetoric has become increasingly explicit.
In July, New Conservative Post reported that Teha Delaruelle, an activist who had briefly volunteered for a Democratic Socialist congressional campaign in Wisconsin, posted a video while sitting beside a board reading “kill your local Republican.”
“We’re going to make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin,” Delaruelle said.
Weeks later, NCP reported that Democratic Socialists of America activist and streamer Michael Beyer said removing the Democratic establishment and gaining control of government would be a “violent process.”
“The Democratic Party establishment that we have has to be ripped out. We can actually start to grab hold of the ship of state and steer it our direction, but it’s going to be a violent process,” Beyer said.
The short clip did not establish whether Beyer was advocating literal physical violence, but the language arrived as DSA-backed candidates were increasingly competing in — and sometimes winning — Democratic primaries.
The pattern does not mean every liberal supports violence, nor does it make every act committed by a disturbed individual an act of left-wing terrorism. Piacenti’s murder, according to police, was neither.
What has changed is the reaction and acceptance of it by liberals, though.
A killing that once would have been treated simply as a tragedy can now become a meme within hours. An accused or admitted killer can become a political symbol. Threatening Republicans can be packaged as online content. Political revolution can casually be described as a “violent process.”
Alexander’s Mangione meme is only an image on social media. But the culture surrounding that image increasingly is not.
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