Luigi Mangione: Alleged Killer Apprehended with All-Too-Familiar Manifesto
This is the first in a two-part series examining America’s reaction to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Part 1 introduces the NYPD’s suspect and his alleged motives. Part 2 explores Americans‘ celebration of the violence.
New York police have charged 26-year-old Luigi Mangione with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, five days after a masked gunman shot him to death on a Manhattan street.
Police arrested Mangione in Pennsylvania on Monday. The alleged killer was carrying a gun, a silencer, a fake ID matching the one the killer used to check into a New York hostel before the murder, and a handwritten manifesto mentioning UnitedHealthcare by name.
Mangione cut off contact with his friends and family in June, according to multiple sources, prompting his mother to file a missing person’s report in November. The young man’s background explains neither his mysterious disappearance nor his alleged capacity to commit murder. By most metrics, Mangione had everything going for him.
Born to a wealthy family, Mangione graduated valedictorian of his 2016 high school class at the prestigious and expensive Gilman School. He subsequently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, according to The New York Times, with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science.
Though social media posts indicate Mangione experienced debilitating back pain beginning in 2022, he underwent successful spinal surgery for the problem almost a year before he dropped off the map. On Reddit, Mangione claimed the procedure alleviated his pain almost immediately.
The three-page document Pennsylvania police discovered in Mangione’s backpack suggests the author, presumably Mangione himself, had developed a deep hatred for the American healthcare system.
After assuring the police he acted alone, the writer accuses UnitedHealthcare and other insurance companies of “abus[ing] our country for immense profit.” The writer claims such companies “get away with it” because “the American public has allowed them [to],” and declares himself the first to confront these “power games” with “such brutal honesty.”
“I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done,” The New York Post quotes the document. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”
Mangione’s social media activity carries little, if any, of the manifesto’s malice. It does, however, suggest Mangione identified with some anti-establishment ideas.
In April, he quoted Aldous Huxley’s famed critique of capitalism, Brave New World, on X. On Goodreads, a website where readers share and review books, he quoted “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto.
Mangione further praised Kaczynski’s ramblings in a Goodreads review.
Mangione’s motive for allegedly killing Thompson might be opaque, but the manifesto’s justification for murder should sound familiar.
It’s all about helping the oppressed overthrow the oppressors.
This is the same worldview that drove America’s descent into antisemitism. When Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, student groups at elite schools like Columbia and Harvard justified the massacre by deeming Israel “the oppressor” and the terror group “the oppressed.”
This narrative prompted activist and student groups to make supportive graphics and chants referencing the parachutes Hamas soldiers used to gun down civilians across the Israeli border. It allowed journalists, activists and professors to justify Hamas’ actions as “decolonization.”
It also enflamed the prosecution of Daniel Penny. Penny faced criminal charges after he restrained Jordan Neely, a violent passenger on a New York subway car, contributing to his death. Neely, who was intoxicated and suffered from schizophrenia, had been threatening to kill other passengers.
Many characterized Penny’s actions as those of a white oppressor against an oppressed black man. When a jury acquitted Penny of criminally negligent homicide on Monday, Black Lives Matter activist Hawk Newsome opined:
Here, Newsome endorses violence against white people as the justified retribution of oppressed black people.
One of the myriad problems with this ideology is its lack of moral absolutes; The morality of violence depends solely on whether the person being hurt is an “oppressor” or someone being “oppressed.”
The assassination of Brian Thompson is the logical product of this ethos. Thompson’s life depended on one person’s unilateral assessment of his role in society. The killer felt morally entitled to carry out a death sentence one he had identified Thompson as a “parasite.”
It’s easy to dismiss Thompson’s murder as the actions of an unhinged idealogue, rather than a reflection on popular perceptions of morality and justice. If that were true, the internet wouldn’t have erupted in praise of the gunman.
More on the morally-bankrupt celebration of murder in Part 2.
Additional Articles and Resources
A Year’s Slide into Antisemitism, Examined
Manhood is on Trial in the Daniel Penny Case
Indoctrination Station: New York State Education Department Pushes Critical Theory on Students
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Washburn is a staff reporter for the Daily Citizen at Focus on the Family and regularly writes stories about politics and noteworthy people. She previously served as a staff reporter for Forbes Magazine, editorial assistant, and contributor for Discourse Magazine and Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper at Westmont College, where she studied communications and political science. Emily has never visited a beach she hasn’t swam at, and is happiest reading a book somewhere tropical.
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