4 days Ago By Alex Passey
There have been a lot of hot takes about Luigi Mangione and his alleged shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson which attempt to make a point while mostly ignoring the heart of the matter. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * There have been a lot of hot takes about Luigi Mangione and his alleged shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson which attempt to make a point while mostly ignoring the heart of the matter. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Opinion There have been a lot of hot takes about Luigi Mangione and his alleged shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson which attempt to make a point while mostly ignoring the heart of the matter.
True, many have paid lip service to the vampiric profit structure which is said to have inspired the violence, but otherwise seem mostly concerned with dismissing Mangione as an actor, while admonishing the internet cheerleaders who have been holding him up as a symbol. Mangione has not pleaded guilty or been convicted in a court of law — he is only suspected in Thompson’s killing. But that hasn’t stopped the public from poring over every detail of his life to create a picture of why he might have done this.
It’s made for an interesting study in who we feel sympathy for and why. Whatever you can say about Mangione, he is no coward. Some have been quick to point out his background of wealth and privilege, a baffling attempt to diminish his right to feel outrage at a broken health-care system that left him wallowing in misery.
As if one can have no grievance with the health-care system unless it bankrupts their family. But we do no service to the impoverished who suffer such a fate by holding them up as a convenient catalyst to belittle Mangione’s own suffering. In effect, maintaining a threshold of a platonic ideal of suffering one must meet before we take them seriously only serves to protect the status quo which inflicts the suffering.
And when one such as Mangione forgoes their position of privilege, puts it all on the line to fight for a cause they are willing to sacrifice for, call it what you will, but it is not cowardice. Many on the internet have recognized this. While some in the media have dismissed these people as trolls, they do so at their own folly.
After all, before Mangione had been arrested and mainstream media outlets were claiming “the motive is still unclear,” many online were already nodding their heads saying, “yep, we get it.” They saw somebody striking back at a figure who symbolized one of the most toxic aspects of a system that leaves them feeling drained and powerless. They not only understood what was happening, they took catharsis in it.
In a bizarre twist though, before a suspect was identified, some online proponents of the political left and right both rushed to claim him. As opposed to what you usually find in comment sections of news stories about killers, where political commentators usually try to attribute the violence to their political opponents. Mangione has, likely unwittingly, demonstrated that the real path to bipartisan support in American politics is the unequivocal rejection of the status quo.
I say unwittingly, because it is true that Mangione’s politics do appear erratic. Neither the online ideologues of the left nor the right have been able to successfully incorporate him comfortably into their folds. Some in the media have been quick to dismiss him as unserious.
However, in this lies the real heart of the matter. Mangione does not represent the left nor the right. He doesn’t represent his privileged class, but also I think we would be foolish to frame him as a Che Guevara-type hero who is fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised.
No — he represents himself. Which is to say, the typical North American swing voter with grab-bag beliefs that are sometimes contradictory and disparate enough that they don’t graft neatly onto any political ideology. He has been radicalized, despite his place of privilege in society.
He is allegedly driven to revolutionary violence, not because of any immersion in political ideology, but simply because this system hurt him and he could see no other recourse. It was suggested in a recent column ( , Dec. 12) that activism, not violence, is the answer to society’s woes.
But this analysis misses the point. And not just because the active violence of the oppressed ought to be examined with the passive violence of the system in equilibrium. It is one thing when an activist sees their work having little impact on a society, and thus gives in to despair and violence.
That is a conversation in itself, and one could make the claim that violence has long been an important part of the revolutionary toolkit, especially in a social climate where activism seems helpless to change institutional monoliths. Or worse, has become neutered and made to work in service of the very machine it ostensibly opposes. Mangione isn’t even that.
He is no activist or cultist. And when even the casually political among us become capable of such actions, when the disparity of who this system serves slims to a narrow sector of corporate shareholders, then people no longer believe this society is capable of, or even interested in, offering solutions. Sometimes the violence isn’t meant to be an answer.
It is just the result of a lack thereof. And when indifference, if not outright celebration, to such violence is the response from a wide swath of people beyond the political spectrum, perhaps the situation deserves more than a moralist finger-wagging. Alex Passey is a Winnipeg author.
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