The widespread fawning over Luigi Mangione, the man charged with the murder of US healthcare boss Brian Thompson, is as bizarre as it is nauseating. You would have thought that we were beyond victim-blaming by now. But no, a consensus has emerged from ‘progressives’ that Thompson ‘had it coming’, and that his alleged killer can be excused for his apparently good motives. Worse still, he can even be indulged on account of his good looks.
The latter response has been the most deranged aspect of this episode. Just when you thought our society couldn’t become more superficial, witness how this ‘hot assassin’ has been lusted over by legions of pervy half-wits. In other circumstances, the actions of a lone nut armed with a gun and violent fantasies would have had progressive Americans in paroxysms of moral panic, usually about gun laws or the threat posed by the far right. But no. It’s different this time, it seems. This killer meant well, we’re told. And aren’t his looks just to die for, too?
Some have sought to dress up their fawning as politically motivated. The former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz seemingly spoke for many when she said her initial reaction to Thompson’s death was one of ‘joy’. Arwa Mahdawi of the Guardian spoke of Thompson as ‘the face of an unfair system.’
Yet many of a similar persuasion have been less guarded in their response. There has been the usual moronic inferno from ‘influencers’, this time with their bovine effusions on this ‘hot felon’, ‘our king’ or the ‘Vigilante Daddy’. ‘How tall is he? Asking for the women on the internet’, wrote one on Instagram. ‘It’s giving 2025 People Magazine Sexiest Man of the Year’, wrote another. The Daily Mail today carried an unfortunate headline: ‘It may seem bizarre, but many women (including me) are captivated by the “hot assassin”.’ In the article, the writer waxes lyrical about this ‘handsome, Ivy League-educated’ man with ‘a rippling six pack’. ‘Souvenir’ merchandise is already for sale, including mugs, t-shirts, hoodies and bags proclaiming Mangione a hero. Products have been decorated with the slogan, ‘Mama, I’m in love with a criminal’.
Then we’ve had the invective directed at the McDonald’s employee who informed on Mangione’s whereabouts to the police – a man now vilified on account of being a ‘snitch’. ‘I may be a murderer but at least I’m not a grass’ – this is the moral standpoint assumed by gangsters.
Much of the language hints that participants are seeking to apologise for their inner instincts, for feeling ashamed at being attracted to Mangione. Surely that’s why we used to call such thoughts ‘guilty secrets’, because they should remain secret. But in this age of oversharing, emotional incontinence and attention-seeking, the virtue of repression no longer commands respect. No one wants to ‘miss out’. ‘Being there’ online when major events occur is now imperative. We want to be part of the crowd, even if that means degrading ourselves.
Beyond all the squalid, sexual objectification of Mangione and victim-blaming of Thompson there is serious matter afoot. In that Daily Mail article, writer Clara Gaspar wrote of the ‘healthcare system failing many other Americans’, in reference to Mangione’s own chronic health problems.
Healthcare in America is indeed in a grievous state, and it would have been easy for someone afflicted by pain and infused with resentment to hone in on a character such as Thompson. The 50-year-old father of two may have been described by his widow as ‘an incredibly loving, generous, talented man’, but for many he was an icon of corporate greed. The media in the US have made much of his salary (more than £7.8million), his alleged role in insider trading and UnitedHealthcare’s 2021 plan to refuse payment for emergency-room visits deemed ‘non-critical’. Many of its clients are faced with astronomical bills and are refused medicines.
Resentment at figures such as Thompson is understandable, but such resentment cannot justify killing, as is implied by much of the commentary. As one reader responded to a recent New York Times article: ‘When all legal avenues to hold the powerful to account have been removed, all attempts at reform have been removed, and all attempts at reform have been defanged, this becomes the inevitability.’ Another on X added that whoever killed Thompson would ‘become a hero of American folklore for hundreds of years’. Swathes of progressive America now appear to endorse a belief that the ends justify the means, that blood needs to be spilt to save the country from itself.
In recent days, it has emerged that Mangione is no left-wing radical, but instead seems to be enamoured of America’s lunatic fringe and its icons. ‘He was a violent individual’, he once wrote of the Unabomber, a terrorist who murdered three people and injured 23 others with nail bombs. ‘While these actions tend to be characterised as those of a crazy Luddite, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary’, Mangione added.
Not so much a modern-day Robin Hood, then. Just another bastard. And what a pity that there will always be those who love a bastard.
Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times, is published by Societas.