Luigi Mangione and the Morality of Killing
Kieran Allen
Luigi Mangione has achieved folk hero status after his alleged assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Health Care. One viral post showed Tony Soprano with the caption, “In this house, Luigi Mangione is a hero, end of story’. It captured the mood of millions.
The mainstream establishment are worried. The Irish Sun, for example, ran an opinion piece from a professor of criminology who stated that Mangione ‘is not a hero nor an anti-hero, this is just another violent man who thinks his violent rantings deserve our attention, our time and airtime’. More substantially, the big U.S. health insurance corporations have taken down photos and details of their executives from their websites.
The context is straightforward. Luigi Mangione comes from a relatively privileged background but suffered from severe back pain. Like many Americans, he dealt with the health insurance industry. In his manifesto, he wrote, ‘Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the U.S. has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the U.S. by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy?’
Irish readers may need some insight. In a privatised health care system many rely on insurance to cover any hospital admittance. But as the primary aim of the health insurance sector is profit, corporations take in millions in public funds and then overbill agencies like Medicare or just cut off treatment for patients. If you need to know how it works, just watch Michael Moore’s film, Sicko, which you can get for free on Youtube.
United Healthcare had the highest claim-denial rate of any private insurance company, at 32%. This meant that chemotherapy treatment for patients was stopped while others were just cut off from other life-saving treatments. Brian Thompson received total compensation of $10.2 million in 2023. Company profits rose on his watch, jumping to more than $16 billion that year, from $12 billion in 2021. In other words, the more patents that were denied health care, the more the corporation’s profits soared.
Now we return to the question of morality.
When someone pulls out a gun and kills another person, the political establishment demand that every public figure engages in a ritual of condemnation. This type of official pacifism is particularly prevalent in the Irish Free State. It is as if Daniel O Conell’s reputed words, ‘No political change is worth the shedding of a single drop of human blood’, has echoed through the generations.
Yet every single day, 4,000 people die because they lack clean drinking water. Many of these lives could be saved though the supply of water purification tablets which cost less than €10 for two hundred. In the longer run, of course, it requires investment in sanitation and sewerage facilities. Yet when asked why water purification tablets cannot be supplied, we are told that it is due to the working of the market and the laws of supply and demand.
In one case, there appears an individual with a conscious will, who is morally judged. In the other, there appears an inevitability caused by the outworking of economic laws. Despite all talk of responsibility for your actions, individuals disappear.
This paradoxical contrast between individual assassination and mass killing broke down in the case of United Healthcare. There was an individual who actually took decisions that led to life or death. Of course, he did not stand at a hospital bedside and ‘choose’ a patient’s fate but probably decided on algorithms which anonymised their victims. The result was still the same.
So, no, we will not be condemning Luigi Mangione. Far better to condemn a for profit system that leads to the premature death of many. Even better, know that behind the anonymous rule of the market lie decision makers—real people—who make life and death decisions.
The reaction on social media is a form of fantasy. Many think that the CEO of United Healthcare got his just desserts by a 21st century Jessie James or Robin Hood. Most would probably agree that it would be better if Brian Thompson were jailed for manslaughter rather than assassinated. But in the absence of this becoming a realistic prospect, many engage in a social media fantasy.
This is not to advocate for the assassination of CEOs. This is not because of a moral argument, but a simple recognition of the fact that others will fill the boots of Brian Thompson. Tragically, United Healthcare will continue to deny lifesaving medical treatments. It will require more than Luigi Mangione to right that wrong.
The assassination of Brian Thompson brings to mind the case of Herschel Grynszpan who was a Jewish refugee living in Paris. In 1938, he walked into the German Embassy in Paris and assassinated a Nazi diplomat. In faraway Mexico, Leon Trotsky wrote, ‘A single isolated hero cannot replace the masses. But we understand only too clearly the inevitability of such convulsive acts of despair and vengeance. All our emotions, all our sympathies are with the self-sacrificing avengers even though they have been unable to discover the correct road.’
It is a sentiment that we share concerning Luigi Mangione.
[Courtesy: Rebel, a socialist website dedicated to challenging establishment politics in Ireland and beyond, and to creating a platform for alternative left-wing viewpoints to be aired. The website is organised by members of the Socialist Workers Network; a revolutionary socialist organisation.]
Killing of the United Healthcare CEO Sparked Long Overdue Conversation About Greed
Sarena Neyman
Call him a misguided hero or villain, but the man who killed the United Healthcare CEO struck a nerve, exposing a deep rage shared by many Americans across the political spectrum — anger at an industry that earns obscene profits from the suffering of others. His chilling act shifted the national conversation from immigration to corporate greed. Finally.
For too long, Americans have hesitated to criticize the super-rich. Chalk it up to our tribalist nature that has so many convinced that our financial struggles are caused not by wealth hoarding but by those we view as outside our clan.
History offers many examples. In Nazi Germany, Jews were blamed for a financial depression triggered by the American stock market crash. My parents and grandmother barely escaped; many in my family did not.
Decades later, Ronald Reagan handed the wealthy the largest tax cuts in US history while vilifying the “Welfare Queen” who leached from the feeding trough of “Big Government.”
This racist caricature was meant to distract from policies that began a 40-year transfer of wealth from the 90 percent to the one percent, producing the largest wealth gap in a century. It’s a story about the undeserving poor vs. the deserving rich.
Today, we face a similar narrative. Immigrants are blamed both for stealing jobs and freeloading despite their essential role in propping up our economy given our shrinking workforce. After being fed a steady anti-immigration media diet, it’s not surprising that nearly four out of five Republicans support placing undocumented immigrants in internment camps.
The greater the wealth imbalance, the more the wealthy need to distort the truth. They peddle the long-discredited Trickle-Down theory, claiming that what benefits them benefits us all. But rising tides don’t lift all boats when some people have no boat at all, or when their boats are sinking because the superyachts are capsizing small craft in their massive wake.
We have to stop believing that billionaires have working people’s interests at heart. In fact, they’re mutually exclusive. A gangbuster stock market depends on keeping wages low and unions banished. Outsized campaign contributions ensure that corporate taxes are slashed and regulations meant to keep us healthy, safe, and not impoverished are gutted.
It makes complete sense that the wealth lobby exploits fears of “socialism” to keep people voting against their own interests. It’s no coincidence the U.S. remains the only developed nation without universal healthcare. This is where our anger should be directed.
But redirecting anger is not easy. Six of the richest US corporations control 90 percent of our media and their profits depend on algorithms and news coverage designed to keep us divided, misinformed, and distracted from this billionaire plunder. “You know the media has failed,” says essayist Rebecca Solnit, “when people are more concerned that a trans girl might play on a softball team than that the climate crisis will destroy our planet.”
During the next four years it will be critical to get people to see through this deception. When we start feeling the fallout from a second Trump term, the scapegoating will intensify. Tariffs, more tax cuts for the rich, and the loss of immigrant labor will send prices soaring and balloon the deficit. Many may lose healthcare, Social Security, and worker protections. The wealth lobby will no doubt point fingers elsewhere.
Change is possible though. As a grant writer for 30 years, I’ve seen campaigns shift public opinion on issues like marriage equality, net neutrality, and climate change. Recently, several states won historic economic reforms after decades of trying. In Massachusetts, RiseUpMass won the nation’s sixth millionaire’s tax by debunking claims it would harm retirees.
In Washington state, the Balance Our Tax Code, a coalition of over 80 diverse groups, from home health aide workers to members of the Yakima Nation, was able pass a capital gains tax, calling out Amazon and Microsoft for avoiding their share of taxes. “The biggest lesson we learned,” said campaign communications manager Reiny Cohen “was that when we come together and tell the same story, lawmakers have no choice but to listen.”
In other words, changing minds requires a coordinated echo chamber. The #MeToo movement showed how the right framing, amplified through the media, can shift perspectives and galvanize action. Imagine if we could help more people connect the dots between stagnant wages, failing schools, a burning planet, unaffordable housing, and the greed of the one percent.
But the message must go beyond bashing billionaires. It must present a compelling vision of what is possible if we stand up against the ultra rich. The We Make Minnesota coalition was able to pass a tax increase on the wealthiest one percent by countering anti-Somali rhetoric with a “We’re Better Off Together” message. Instead of using a “Stop the Cuts” framework, the campaign emphasized the subsidized health care, free preschool, and tuition-free college programs the state is now able to offer.
This isn’t about destroying capitalism. A healthy balance between a free market and protective government is essential. But when the richest among us prioritize profit over the well-being of the majority, it’s no longer about politics—it’s about survival.
The murder of the United Healthcare CEO, as horrendous as it was, forced us to confront the injustices we’ve been taught to tolerate. This moment must unite us against the true enemies of the American dream: unchecked greed and exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. We can either remain manipulated by scapegoating and fear or see the truth and demand change. Only then can we build a society where no one feels driven to such desperate measures again.
(Sarena Neyman is a writer who lives in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. Courtesy: Elizabethton Star, a Tennessee based newspaper.)
