NEW YORK — Pretrial hearings for Luigi Mangione, accused of second-degree murder in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, were held here Dec. 1-18. The liberal media’s fascination with Mangione, alongside the worship of violence by the middle-class left, pose serious dangers for working people.
The CEO was shot from behind at close range by a lone gunman in Manhattan while on his way to work Dec. 4, 2024. Surveillance video caught the shooting on tape. Bullets found at the scene had the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” etched on them, terms used by health insurance bosses to describe their efforts to thwart lawsuits. Five days later Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, with a false ID, a gun, as well as a document assailing the health insurance industry and urging the killing of its CEOs.
His attorneys used the court hearing to try and suppress this evidence. He faces three separate cases and has pled not guilty to the one he faces here.
People Over Profits New York demonstrated outside the hearings, using the case as a pretext to protest against health care providers. A digital billboard truck displaying stories of people denied health insurance coverage was parked outside the court, reinforcing the notion that Mangione’s heart was in the right place.
Many of Mangione’s supporters don’t care if he was guilty or not. They think what he did was just, and he should be free. “No one was listening” about the health care crisis, nurse Natalie Jeremias told the Wall Street Journal. “What else could he do?”
The fascination with Mangione extends to the editors and writers for the New York Times, who saw fit to print a lengthy article about the hearing, headlined “The Meaning of Luigi Mangione’s New Suits.” It was written by the paper’s chief fashion critic.
Ever since his arrest, Mangione has been idolized among layers of the middle-class left and beyond. Merchandisers are selling “Mama, I’m in love with a criminal” tote bags with Mangione’s picture on them.
People Before Profits New York chartered a plane to fly over the city on May 10, Mangione’s birthday, towing a banner reading, “Free health care. Free Luigi.”
Last summer tickets for “Luigi: The Musical” sold out immediately in San Francisco. He is “an earnest and unassuming critic of capitalism,” albeit a “naive narcissist,” Amanda Hess wrote in her New York Times review. She compares the depiction of Mangione to righteous outlaws in the wild west, who “represent a higher form of social justice.”
Mangione, as well as Tyler Robinson, who is accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk, are “a new archetype,” David Wallace-Wells wrote in the liberal New York Times. “The suspects themselves seem to be growing more normal.”
The normalization of murderous violence against political opponents has its roots in Stalinist politics. These deadly attacks go back to Stalin’s murder of millions of those opposing his regime, including Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, as well as others he simply didn’t trust.
In the 1960s and ’70s Stalinist outfits glorified the brutal methods employed by the Mao Tse-Tung regime in China. This spawned terrorist outfits in the U.S., like the Weathermen in the 1960s.
Black Lives Matter, antifa and others turned protests against police brutality after the 2020 death of George Floyd into weeks of bloody rioting. Many in these groups are part of the middle-class meritocracy — an insecure and resentful social layer — at a time of sharpening class polarization and tension.
Following Hamas’ murderous Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel, middle-class radicals in the U.S. and worldwide have glorified the massacre. This is what their call to “Globalize the Intifada” means. Assaults on Jews in Australia, the U.S. and elsewhere are on the rise.
Liberals adapt to middle-class left
The lionizing of the murder of CEO Thompson, and of the assassination attempts against Donald Trump in 2024, are an outgrowth of the explosion of “cancel culture” on the left. Over years extreme intolerance toward political opponents led to the shutting down of political events, especially on campuses. This went side by side with bans on works of literature, history and anything else that doesn’t conform to the woke values of those who dominate academia.
Liberals don’t openly espouse assaults like the one Mangione is accused of carrying out. But they do provide excuses for them. “Violence is never the answer,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said after Thompson’s murder, but she added, “People can only be pushed so far.” She later retracted her comments.
The glorification of what Mangione is alleged to have done has nothing to do with fighting the capitalist rulers’ refusal to provide government-guaranteed health care. Individual violence like this sets back working-class struggles. It cuts across the discussion and debate workers need today to forge a road forward.
The worship of violence by the middle-class left will be pushed back as working-class struggles grow. As workers gain self-confidence and unions exert their social power, they’ll come to the heart of the leadership of struggles against capitalist exploitation, its many injustices and its wars.
In the course of the revolutionary battles to come, workers will have our chance to take political power.