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I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but Luigi Mangione as martyr figure makes me extremely uncomfortable. This is a very different situation than the Aaro

I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but Luigi Mangione as martyr figure makes me extremely uncomfortable. This is a very different situation than the Aaron Swartz or any of the other victims of abuse by powerful people and corporations. What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? It's one thing when you agree with the motive, but are we ready to accept the inevitable outcome that someone decides to engineer a high-profile murder to push a different agenda? In a lot of ways this is like all the media attention on school shootings: we will see copycats, and the next one may not be targeting an unsympathetic healthcare CEO.

voidfunc 2y ago
It's becoming acceptable to people because many people increasingly feel their means for change are being suppressed or their voices ignored. This kind of violence is just the beginning. It's what happens when societies start to collapse.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > This kind of violence is just the beginning. It's what happens when societies start to collapse Well, no. It’s what forms popular pretext for expanding police powers. If we get a second or third Mangione, search and arrest powers will have to be expanded.
  - ok_dad 2y ago
    Why? We have a few thousand murders in the USA each year, why would a few more deaths cause a need for expanded police power when several thousand other deaths didn’t require it?
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > why would a few more deaths cause a need for expanded police power when several thousand other deaths didn’t require it? Visibility.
      - ok_dad 2y ago
        Sorry, I meant to say, "other than the fact that the additional deaths are rich people." I know that the real reason is "because they are rich and powerful and the cops serve them as masters" but I was curious if you had another reason.
  - AngryData 2y ago
    You act like police powers haven't been continuously expanded for decades despite crime rates dropping regardless of local police presence.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > like police powers haven't been continuously expanded for decades They have also seen periods of reduction, e.g. in the wake of George Floyd (until the abolish the police nutters took the loudspeaker).
      - Teever 2y ago
        Can you time line that out for me? I didn't follow those events too closely but what you're saying doesn't really line up with how I remember them.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_reform_in_the_United_States#2010_to_present https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_reform_in_the_United_...
      - AngryData 2y ago
        The defund police advocacy wasn't really anything of note until George Floyd. You are saying the same movement that caused a reduction is the exact same movement that stopped the reduction? Also George Floyd was in 2020, a few select cities making some minor moves for a few years doesn't make up for decade after decade after decade of rampant expansion of police powers and armaments across the entire nation. I don't see any significant reduction in our prison population despite the consistent drop in crime, a prison population that dwarfs basically most of the rest of the world's prisoner-to-population ratio other than a few small countries that are either notably oppressed or completely politically unstable.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
- Gigachad 2y ago
  It makes people on this site uncomfortable because they are seeing that while they build their AI powered debt collectors and insurance denier startups, the general public would celebrate them being shot.
viccis 2y ago
>What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? No one's setting it. Things have been that way in the past. A lot of laws now are designed to avoid allowing organizations to brutalize people so badly that those people view violence as the only recourse. When there are no judicial penalties for running a vast machine of death like UnitedHealthcare, then eventually people seek extrajudicial ones. Our goal should be to make sure that this doesn't happen. Luigi is a symptom, not the sickness to be treated.
- lolinder 2y ago
  When was the last time we named a law—informally or otherwise—after someone because they committed a high profile murder and wrote a manifesto about it?
  - harimau777 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Or maybe it's only a problem when it happens on the right? I and others swarm on here to shut down people who try to justify the crimes committed by right wingers motivated by the same reasoning. It's only when it comes to Luigi Mangione that I feel suddenly alone.
      - harimau777 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - hobs 2y ago
        And unfortunately for y'all they are currently criming up a storm with no end in sight, making it easier for corporations to poison and murder us, and packed the courts to make sure there's no response possible. What is the next step in your mind?
echelon 2y ago
I don't think Mangione is ever going away. He's outright embraced by left-leaning folks as a hero and an answer to current ills [1]. America is a land of revolutionaries that fought to the death. That's still in our cultural DNA, and we still sell guns to people. If a Mangione incident happens again, it may embolden folks even more and become an increasingly frequent phenomena. (Teaching others how to behave through mimetic behavior and normalizing it.) The French Revolution wasn't that long ago. A lot of incredibly violent rebellions happen all over the world. If you push people to a point, they'll act. This is probably just the start. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1jnfgnb/antiteslamusk_protesters_in_manhattan_new_york/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1jnfgnb/antiteslamusk...
- 9283409232 2y ago
  You say he is embraced by "left-leaning folks" as if he isn't embraced by conservatives as well. Ben Shapiro tried to play the same card you are and his fanbase ate him alive saying "stop trying to make this left vs right. It's a bi-partisan issue." When Ben Shapiro's fans are able to see the light for a brief moment, I think it's fair to say this specific issue reaches across the aisle.
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    All members of the political spectrum have or have known people that have had serious issues with insurance and saw the resulting fallout, such as denied coverage or bankruptcy due to insurance not covering something etc. There’s enough of that happen that it is in the majority of people’s living memories across age spectrums too. A true issue that unites all political leanings it seems
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - echelon 2y ago
    I really don't think this is bipartisan at all. I've lurked in /r/conservative out of curiosity expressly with respect to this topic. Between that and the other conservative commentary I've read on the matter, conservative folks have mostly dumped on Mangione and called his actions terrorism. Even you state that he isn't enduringly popular with Ben Shapiro fans. I'm no expert here, but I'm pretty sure I'm right about conservatives not liking Mangione. Moreover, I do think I know what moderates and Joe Biden-style neoliberals think, as that's mostly my circle of friends. They don't look favorably on Mangione's actions, either.
mplanchard 2y ago
If the system were capable of holding companies and CEOs accountable for behavior that causes obvious and irreparable harm to thousands or millions of people, there would be no need for people like Luigi, and he would not be viewed the way that he is.
- lolinder 2y ago
  That is a totally separate question from whether this precedent will directly cause deaths that you and everyone else here will feel bad about. What happens when people internalize that it's not only okay but good to go kill the "bad guys" since the law won't?
  - mplanchard 2y ago
    What happens when society internalizes that it’s okay for a CEO’s actions to cause the deaths of thousands, and that that somehow weighs less heavily on the scale than one murder? The UHC CEO in my opinion did a lot more harm to people than Luigi. The point is that people won’t internalize that vigilantism is the right path unless the system is broken. If you don’t want that, fix the system.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      > society internalizes that it’s okay for a CEO’s actions to cause the deaths of thousands How did they kill thousands? Insurance companies doesn't determine your treatment, doctors do. If you mean they deny some optional treatments, that is what socialized healthcare has to do as well, are you saying European politicians are also the cause of thousands of deaths since they deny some expensive treatments that could save lives, and thus should be killed?
      - xracy 2y ago
        > Insurance companies doesn't determine your treatment, doctors do. I'm sorry you don't understand how insurance in the US works. This is patently false. Insurance companies absolutely determine your treatment, and not just for "optional treatments" whatever that means.
zer8k 2y ago
Denying life saving treatment to bolster your bottom line for shareholders is also murder by any other name. If you consider murder as requiring malice aforethought then it certainly fits the bill. Just because someone hides behind legalease does not release them from the moral and ethical corruption. No different than the death penalty this is simply a form of murder society has decided is acceptable. So then it should be easy to see why a large portion of Americans vocally approved of this. So much so, that the media couldn’t even run enough cover to deaden even half the sound of the cheering. I don’t know a single person who has gone through, or watched a love one going through horrific health insurance “process” in order to gain life saving care, that wouldn’t want someone to be “paid in kind” for their suffering. Is “murder someone” just? No. Do I agree that this was how we should’ve approached fixing healthcare? Absolutely not. But there is an interesting moral and ethical dilemma that, much like everything else in life, paints a picture that is not exactly black or white. Many people view healthcare as an inalienable right. You can see how this creates a potentially dangerous high stakes conflict. The proper solution is, of course, to use our legal system to provide safeguards for the most vulnerable health insurance customers. If we focused hard on this, as we should, this entire situation could’ve been completely avoided.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I'm not especially interested in the moral and ethical dilemma of whether it's okay to murder—in my own frame of ethics it's not up for debate, and I don't share axioms with people who think it is. I'm far more interested in the fact that not everyone has the same set of values and the next victim of a politically motivated murder by someone looking to make a statement will probably be a victim that those here won't consider to have deserved it (but of course the murderer will!).
- kortilla 2y ago
  Denying is not for shareholders, it’s for policyholders. A health insurance provider that doesn’t put guardrails on treatments will fail because the required policy rates will go up so much that the healthy people will go to a lower cost provider. People are happy saying the insurance provider should just pay for everything until the bill comes due in higher monthly premiums. Insurance companies are doing the only thing they can to exist in this fucked up system where people can bail when prices increase.
harimau777 2y ago
[flagged]
krapp 2y ago
>What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal agenda? None. It already is. People murder other people all the time, sometimes to make progress on their personal agendas. Vigilantism isn't new, it's been romanticized and elevated as noble and virtuous ever since Thomas Jefferson waxed poetic about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. I don't understand why so many people consider this one incident so existentially threatening. Is it just because the victim was rich? Why did everyone clutch their pearls and worry about the fate of civilization because one rich guy got shot, but write off countless other victims of gun violence as just the price of living in a free society? Is it just that people were surprised there was such little sympathy for the victim? Have you seen the way people talk about black victims of police violence? was that callousness and lack of empathy just shocking because the victim was white? I mean, it didn't even move the needle on anything. There was no uprising, no revolution. Just fucking memes.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > don't understand why so many people consider this one incident so existentially threatening Nobody, perhaps other than his supporters, does because it wasn’t particularly important. Just visible because of where it happened and that the shooter is hot.
sepositus 2y ago
There seems to be an increasingly large subgroup of people who would never have the nerve to commit murder but are participating in the radicalization of people that _are_ capable of doing such things. They are mostly OK with it now because it's benefitting them. The problem will arise when things inevitably get out of control.
- TMWNN 2y ago
  >There seems to be an increasingly large subgroup of people who would never have the nerve to commit murder but are participating in the radicalization of people that _are_ capable of doing such things. I've come to believe that the average Redditor is mentally ill. A recent comment: <https://np.reddit.com/r/California_Politics/comments/1jmqsbn/california_governor_newsom_says_the_democratic/mkekijp/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/California_Politics/comments/1jmqsbn...>: >There was a question on r/askreddit yesterday. If you woke up tomorrow with Superman’s powers. What would you do. 90% of the comments immediately jumped to murdering the president and every Republican A reply: >You weren't kidding <https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jmd6c8/you_wake_up_tomorrow_with_supermans_powers_what/ https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jmd6c8/you_wake_...>. There was even talk about launching Cyber Truck's into space with their passengers.
no_wizard 2y ago
> What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? If you head a big corporation like say Exxon, and you sign off on lobbying efforts to reduce pollution regulations, deny climate change etc. which will inevitably kill thousands of people, all in the service of the CEOs political agenda, is that different somehow? Yet the police aren’t arresting those folks > In a lot of ways this is like all the media attention on school shootings: we will see copycats, and the next one may not be targeting an unsympathetic healthcare CEO I wonder if we dug into most CEOs of public companies if they’d be sympathetic. After all, they say psychopaths excel at two things, being CEOs or being serial killers. I suspect the skeletons in the closet are quite voluminous for many, many of these folks
- Jensson 2y ago
  > Yet the police aren’t arresting those folks Do you really want the police to take the law in their own hands and just start arresting people they don't like?
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    Don’t like? I am talking about people that are in fact responsible for the death of thousands of people, you realize that is the result of the choices right?
  - Teever 2y ago
    I'd be pretty content if legislative bodies passed laws that empowered prosecutors to actively go after white collar criminals with the same fervour that they went after people who grew some weed in the 90s. And of course I'd like to see law enforcement actually act on those powers, and the powers that they currently have to stop white collar crime from doing the kind of damage that it does to our society. This[0] is a good example of the kind of stuff that we should be excising from our society because the cost of not doing so is unchecked corruption that hoovers up resources that could be fixing all kinds of social ills that we both are worse off from. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/02/21/mormon-church-will-pay-millions-in-sec-settlement-over-investment-portfolio-allegedly-saving-for-second-coming-of-christ/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/02/21/mormon-...
tehjoker 2y ago
If they target someone unsymathetic, they won't get plaudits. Simple.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> In a lot of ways this is like all the media attention on school shootings: we will see copycats, and the next one may not be targeting an unsympathetic healthcare CEO. Would it target unsympathetic CEOs in other industries? I am just trying to measure the pros and cons here. Jokes aside, that Luigi Mangione is a martyr to some subset of the population is hardly surprising. Unlike school shootings, where the senseless violence victimizes only eminently innocent people, what Mangione did victimizes someone seem by a large section of society as a perpetrator. I agree that it is unsettling, but only in the sense that it feels like some important piece of the social contract has been lost along the way, and it is hard to know where it will end.
- ok_dad 2y ago
  The social contract was lost when big business and its execs stopped caring about the humans they employ or serve as customers. Eventually, when regular people see that laws and ethics don’t apply to the rich and powerful, they decide they shouldn’t have to follow stupid laws either. The leaders of America started it, of course the followers of America will follow.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  > Would it target unsympathetic CEOs in other industries? Industries that are essential to living, sure. I think the health insurance industry is so egregious is because you PAY them money and they DENY you health care. It evokes a very strong response, because it can clearly be interpreted as theft. I can't imagine a comparable scenario in e.g. grocery industry where you'd pay for something in a grocery store and get nothing for it.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    Some insurance claims get denied, but plenty of them are approved. It might surprise you to learn that most Americans are satisfied with their health insurance: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/us/elections/health-insurance-polls.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/us/elections/health-insur... If health insurance is as bad as you say, why aren't people just cancelling their plans and paying for everything out of pocket?
harimau777 2y ago
To take a slightly broader perspective: I don't think this is actually particularly new or unusual. Criminal folk heroes have a long history. See for example Robin Hood, The Outlaws of the Marsh, Jessie James, and murder ballads (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_ballad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_ballad).
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Whether popular or not makes no difference. The guy murdered. Nonetheless I also feel a sense of helplessness given the current political climate. I posted once that if you invite violence to dinner you'll find you have a guest unwilling to leave. It was not a popular comment. Most of the responses said something to the effect of, "So you don't think violence ever accomplished anything?" I thought that was orthogonal and was an appalled frankly by the apparent justification for violence. Having said the above though, I am surprised that with so many denied health care and — facing essentially a death sentence — why do we not see more of them going postal?
- gruez 2y ago
  >Having said the above though, I am surprised that with so many denied health care and — facing essentially a death sentence — why do we not see more of them going postal? Did Mangione's even have personal beef with UNH, or even with the insurance industry? I thought he wasn't covered by UNH, and although he had a botched back surgery, he wasn't denied coverage?
  - JKCalhoun 2y ago
    Yeah, I don't know. My sense is that he is a very entitled young man though and so, no, he is not someone that would be reacting to his own situation. I didn't mean to imply that he was — but that there are plenty of others though.
    - TMWNN 2y ago
      >Yeah, I don't know. My sense is that he is a very entitled young man though and so, no, he is not someone that would be reacting to his own situation. Mangione is an Ivy League engineer from a wealthy East coast family, while Thompson was a Iowa state school accountant whose father worked on grain elevators.
  - tekla 2y ago
    He had nothing to do with UNH. He just really really wanted to kill someone that he didn't like and chose the UNH guy.
happytoexplain 2y ago
>I know this is an unpopular opinion here This always poisons the tone of a comment. Just like, "I know this will get downvoted": You should just state your opinion without proactively casting yourself as the minority voice. It feels like self-pity, and at the same time implicitly colors disagreement with you as dog-piling or talking-down. That said: >Luigi Mangione as martyr figure makes me extremely uncomfortable Is that even a minority opinion? Glorifying assassination should make everybody uncomfortable, no? That's a big, central part of the point of glorifying his crime. >This is a very different situation than the Aaron Swartz Is a comparison to Aaron common? I mean specifically in terms of the imposition of law onto them. I haven't seen that opinion here, personally. Just because people have sympathy for both of them doesn't mean there is an implication that what they each did is comparable. >What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress An extreme one. And not a novel one.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > This always poisons the tone of a comment. Just like, "I know this will get downvoted": You should just state your opinion without proactively casting yourself as the minority voice. It feels like self-pity, and at the same time implicitly colors disagreement with you as dog-piling or talking-down. I wish it weren't necessary, but it's pretty much the only way to get a minority opinion any traction. It's primes the few who do agree with you to preemptively upvote before the mob of downvotes sets in, and it does also work to reduce the number of reactive downvotes that get added. I try to avoid "I know this will get downvoted" because it's too meta, but yes, it accomplishes the same thing. > Is that even a minority opinion? Glorifying assassination should make everybody uncomfortable, no? That's a big, central part of the point of glorifying his crime. In the comments section of HN, it absolutely has been. Every Mangione thread is filled with his fans, and every comment that critiques the glorification of what he did is mobbed by them.
chrisoverzero 2y ago
> What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? If this is what you are worried about, America is pretty far behind the leading edge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/asia/court-dissolution-unification-church-japan-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/asia/court-dissolution-unific...
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Luigi Mangione as martyr figure makes me extremely uncomfortable Mangione is viewed sympathetically by like 20% of Americans [1] and about double that fraction among 18 to 29-year olds. You can find similar stats for flat Eartherism (10% yes, 19% including unsure [2]) or Nazism (10 and 17%, respectively) [3]. Essentially, there is no evidence he is a martyr beyond the baseline fraction of crazy beliefs in society. (Note: I am not suggesting he’s viewed favourably by Nazis. Just that everyone has some niche beliefs, some more, some fewer, and they have a weird tendency of distributing such that about a fifth of the population entertains one of the popular ones.) In this case, the Mangione connection will help get the initiative on the ballot before promptly guaranteeing its failure. [1] https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_fWe8hY3.pdf#page12 https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabRepor... [2] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-survey-us-public-beliefs https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-sur... [3] https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1190a1TrumpandCharlottesville.pdf https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1190a1Trum...
- kelipso 2y ago
  A third of young people aren't flat Earthers or Nazis, what the hell.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > third of young people aren't flat Earthers Just about! “4 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old age group said they actually believe the world is flat. Rather, there seem to be a relatively large number in this age group who are willing to entertain doubts: 9 percent said they had always believed the world was round but were recently having doubts, 5 percent said they had always believed the world was flat but were becoming skeptical of that conclusion and 16 percent just weren't sure” [1]. [1] https://www.livescience.com/62220-millennials-flat-earth-belief.html https://www.livescience.com/62220-millennials-flat-earth-bel...
xracy 2y ago
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -John F. Kennedy The thing about MLK, is that he existed as a backdrop to more violent alternatives. He is celebrated for being the better of those options, but when companies are not willing to negotiate with the nicer option, eventually they will make the violent one inevitable. Additionally, I think the thing people get wrong about the "Luigi as martyr figure" is that UHC is itself a violent organization responsible for many deaths. When you project that you are only able to listen to "profits" and people don't have any way to provide feedback via "profits" to you, then they're going to look for other kinds of speech. And unfortunately, this kind of speech was made clear to work (see insurance companies sitting up and fixing a couple of the policies they had in the pipeline as a result of this action, and people's response to the UHC CEO being not negative). I don't like this direction we're headed in, but I'd be lying if I said I saw other ways to make headway here. Especially given the current administration's interest in regulation.
motorest 2y ago
> What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? I think you got it backwards. The question you should be asking yourself is why did so many Americans supported and even applauded the idea of murdering a CEO of a medical insurance company. You barely get this level of reaction from condemning sadistic murderers with the death penalty. But when it happened to a specific CEO of a specific healthcare company, you saw a wave of popular support across the US. Why do you think regular working people leading regular working class lives enthusiastically applauded it?
areyouliving 2y ago
I agree, but Luigi only killed one. The insurers murder many and by default torture the entire country constantly. The reason Luigi exists as a positive figure in our zeitgiest is because government is captured by industry and doesn't represent the will of the voting public.

voidfunc 2y ago

It's becoming acceptable to people because many people increasingly feel their means for change are being suppressed or their voices ignored. This kind of violence is just the beginning. It's what happens when societies start to collapse.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> This kind of violence is just the beginning. It's what happens when societies start to collapse Well, no. It’s what forms popular pretext for expanding police powers. If we get a second or third Mangione, search and arrest powers will have to be expanded.
- ok_dad 2y ago
  Why? We have a few thousand murders in the USA each year, why would a few more deaths cause a need for expanded police power when several thousand other deaths didn’t require it?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > why would a few more deaths cause a need for expanded police power when several thousand other deaths didn’t require it? Visibility.
    - ok_dad 2y ago
      Sorry, I meant to say, "other than the fact that the additional deaths are rich people." I know that the real reason is "because they are rich and powerful and the cops serve them as masters" but I was curious if you had another reason.
- AngryData 2y ago
  You act like police powers haven't been continuously expanded for decades despite crime rates dropping regardless of local police presence.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > like police powers haven't been continuously expanded for decades They have also seen periods of reduction, e.g. in the wake of George Floyd (until the abolish the police nutters took the loudspeaker).
    - Teever 2y ago
      Can you time line that out for me? I didn't follow those events too closely but what you're saying doesn't really line up with how I remember them.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_reform_in_the_United_States#2010_to_present https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_reform_in_the_United_...
    - AngryData 2y ago
      The defund police advocacy wasn't really anything of note until George Floyd. You are saying the same movement that caused a reduction is the exact same movement that stopped the reduction? Also George Floyd was in 2020, a few select cities making some minor moves for a few years doesn't make up for decade after decade after decade of rampant expansion of police powers and armaments across the entire nation. I don't see any significant reduction in our prison population despite the consistent drop in crime, a prison population that dwarfs basically most of the rest of the world's prisoner-to-population ratio other than a few small countries that are either notably oppressed or completely politically unstable.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
Gigachad 2y ago
It makes people on this site uncomfortable because they are seeing that while they build their AI powered debt collectors and insurance denier startups, the general public would celebrate them being shot.

viccis 2y ago

>What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? No one's setting it. Things have been that way in the past. A lot of laws now are designed to avoid allowing organizations to brutalize people so badly that those people view violence as the only recourse. When there are no judicial penalties for running a vast machine of death like UnitedHealthcare, then eventually people seek extrajudicial ones. Our goal should be to make sure that this doesn't happen. Luigi is a symptom, not the sickness to be treated.

lolinder 2y ago
When was the last time we named a law—informally or otherwise—after someone because they committed a high profile murder and wrote a manifesto about it?
- harimau777 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Or maybe it's only a problem when it happens on the right? I and others swarm on here to shut down people who try to justify the crimes committed by right wingers motivated by the same reasoning. It's only when it comes to Luigi Mangione that I feel suddenly alone.
    - harimau777 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - hobs 2y ago
      And unfortunately for y'all they are currently criming up a storm with no end in sight, making it easier for corporations to poison and murder us, and packed the courts to make sure there's no response possible. What is the next step in your mind?

echelon 2y ago

I don't think Mangione is ever going away. He's outright embraced by left-leaning folks as a hero and an answer to current ills [1]. America is a land of revolutionaries that fought to the death. That's still in our cultural DNA, and we still sell guns to people. If a Mangione incident happens again, it may embolden folks even more and become an increasingly frequent phenomena. (Teaching others how to behave through mimetic behavior and normalizing it.) The French Revolution wasn't that long ago. A lot of incredibly violent rebellions happen all over the world. If you push people to a point, they'll act. This is probably just the start. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1jnfgnb/antiteslamusk_protesters_in_manhattan_new_york/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1jnfgnb/antiteslamusk...

9283409232 2y ago
You say he is embraced by "left-leaning folks" as if he isn't embraced by conservatives as well. Ben Shapiro tried to play the same card you are and his fanbase ate him alive saying "stop trying to make this left vs right. It's a bi-partisan issue." When Ben Shapiro's fans are able to see the light for a brief moment, I think it's fair to say this specific issue reaches across the aisle.
- no_wizard 2y ago
  All members of the political spectrum have or have known people that have had serious issues with insurance and saw the resulting fallout, such as denied coverage or bankruptcy due to insurance not covering something etc. There’s enough of that happen that it is in the majority of people’s living memories across age spectrums too. A true issue that unites all political leanings it seems
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- echelon 2y ago
  I really don't think this is bipartisan at all. I've lurked in /r/conservative out of curiosity expressly with respect to this topic. Between that and the other conservative commentary I've read on the matter, conservative folks have mostly dumped on Mangione and called his actions terrorism. Even you state that he isn't enduringly popular with Ben Shapiro fans. I'm no expert here, but I'm pretty sure I'm right about conservatives not liking Mangione. Moreover, I do think I know what moderates and Joe Biden-style neoliberals think, as that's mostly my circle of friends. They don't look favorably on Mangione's actions, either.

mplanchard 2y ago

If the system were capable of holding companies and CEOs accountable for behavior that causes obvious and irreparable harm to thousands or millions of people, there would be no need for people like Luigi, and he would not be viewed the way that he is.

lolinder 2y ago
That is a totally separate question from whether this precedent will directly cause deaths that you and everyone else here will feel bad about. What happens when people internalize that it's not only okay but good to go kill the "bad guys" since the law won't?
- mplanchard 2y ago
  What happens when society internalizes that it’s okay for a CEO’s actions to cause the deaths of thousands, and that that somehow weighs less heavily on the scale than one murder? The UHC CEO in my opinion did a lot more harm to people than Luigi. The point is that people won’t internalize that vigilantism is the right path unless the system is broken. If you don’t want that, fix the system.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > society internalizes that it’s okay for a CEO’s actions to cause the deaths of thousands How did they kill thousands? Insurance companies doesn't determine your treatment, doctors do. If you mean they deny some optional treatments, that is what socialized healthcare has to do as well, are you saying European politicians are also the cause of thousands of deaths since they deny some expensive treatments that could save lives, and thus should be killed?
    - xracy 2y ago
      > Insurance companies doesn't determine your treatment, doctors do. I'm sorry you don't understand how insurance in the US works. This is patently false. Insurance companies absolutely determine your treatment, and not just for "optional treatments" whatever that means.

zer8k 2y ago

Denying life saving treatment to bolster your bottom line for shareholders is also murder by any other name. If you consider murder as requiring malice aforethought then it certainly fits the bill. Just because someone hides behind legalease does not release them from the moral and ethical corruption. No different than the death penalty this is simply a form of murder society has decided is acceptable. So then it should be easy to see why a large portion of Americans vocally approved of this. So much so, that the media couldn’t even run enough cover to deaden even half the sound of the cheering. I don’t know a single person who has gone through, or watched a love one going through horrific health insurance “process” in order to gain life saving care, that wouldn’t want someone to be “paid in kind” for their suffering. Is “murder someone” just? No. Do I agree that this was how we should’ve approached fixing healthcare? Absolutely not. But there is an interesting moral and ethical dilemma that, much like everything else in life, paints a picture that is not exactly black or white. Many people view healthcare as an inalienable right. You can see how this creates a potentially dangerous high stakes conflict. The proper solution is, of course, to use our legal system to provide safeguards for the most vulnerable health insurance customers. If we focused hard on this, as we should, this entire situation could’ve been completely avoided.

lolinder 2y ago
I'm not especially interested in the moral and ethical dilemma of whether it's okay to murder—in my own frame of ethics it's not up for debate, and I don't share axioms with people who think it is. I'm far more interested in the fact that not everyone has the same set of values and the next victim of a politically motivated murder by someone looking to make a statement will probably be a victim that those here won't consider to have deserved it (but of course the murderer will!).
kortilla 2y ago
Denying is not for shareholders, it’s for policyholders. A health insurance provider that doesn’t put guardrails on treatments will fail because the required policy rates will go up so much that the healthy people will go to a lower cost provider. People are happy saying the insurance provider should just pay for everything until the bill comes due in higher monthly premiums. Insurance companies are doing the only thing they can to exist in this fucked up system where people can bail when prices increase.

harimau777 2y ago

[flagged]

krapp 2y ago

>What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal agenda? None. It already is. People murder other people all the time, sometimes to make progress on their personal agendas. Vigilantism isn't new, it's been romanticized and elevated as noble and virtuous ever since Thomas Jefferson waxed poetic about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. I don't understand why so many people consider this one incident so existentially threatening. Is it just because the victim was rich? Why did everyone clutch their pearls and worry about the fate of civilization because one rich guy got shot, but write off countless other victims of gun violence as just the price of living in a free society? Is it just that people were surprised there was such little sympathy for the victim? Have you seen the way people talk about black victims of police violence? was that callousness and lack of empathy just shocking because the victim was white? I mean, it didn't even move the needle on anything. There was no uprising, no revolution. Just fucking memes.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> don't understand why so many people consider this one incident so existentially threatening Nobody, perhaps other than his supporters, does because it wasn’t particularly important. Just visible because of where it happened and that the shooter is hot.

sepositus 2y ago

There seems to be an increasingly large subgroup of people who would never have the nerve to commit murder but are participating in the radicalization of people that _are_ capable of doing such things. They are mostly OK with it now because it's benefitting them. The problem will arise when things inevitably get out of control.

TMWNN 2y ago
>There seems to be an increasingly large subgroup of people who would never have the nerve to commit murder but are participating in the radicalization of people that _are_ capable of doing such things. I've come to believe that the average Redditor is mentally ill. A recent comment: <https://np.reddit.com/r/California_Politics/comments/1jmqsbn/california_governor_newsom_says_the_democratic/mkekijp/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/California_Politics/comments/1jmqsbn...>: >There was a question on r/askreddit yesterday. If you woke up tomorrow with Superman’s powers. What would you do. 90% of the comments immediately jumped to murdering the president and every Republican A reply: >You weren't kidding <https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jmd6c8/you_wake_up_tomorrow_with_supermans_powers_what/ https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jmd6c8/you_wake_...>. There was even talk about launching Cyber Truck's into space with their passengers.

no_wizard 2y ago

> What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? If you head a big corporation like say Exxon, and you sign off on lobbying efforts to reduce pollution regulations, deny climate change etc. which will inevitably kill thousands of people, all in the service of the CEOs political agenda, is that different somehow? Yet the police aren’t arresting those folks > In a lot of ways this is like all the media attention on school shootings: we will see copycats, and the next one may not be targeting an unsympathetic healthcare CEO I wonder if we dug into most CEOs of public companies if they’d be sympathetic. After all, they say psychopaths excel at two things, being CEOs or being serial killers. I suspect the skeletons in the closet are quite voluminous for many, many of these folks

Jensson 2y ago
> Yet the police aren’t arresting those folks Do you really want the police to take the law in their own hands and just start arresting people they don't like?
- no_wizard 2y ago
  Don’t like? I am talking about people that are in fact responsible for the death of thousands of people, you realize that is the result of the choices right?
- Teever 2y ago
  I'd be pretty content if legislative bodies passed laws that empowered prosecutors to actively go after white collar criminals with the same fervour that they went after people who grew some weed in the 90s. And of course I'd like to see law enforcement actually act on those powers, and the powers that they currently have to stop white collar crime from doing the kind of damage that it does to our society. This[0] is a good example of the kind of stuff that we should be excising from our society because the cost of not doing so is unchecked corruption that hoovers up resources that could be fixing all kinds of social ills that we both are worse off from. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/02/21/mormon-church-will-pay-millions-in-sec-settlement-over-investment-portfolio-allegedly-saving-for-second-coming-of-christ/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/02/21/mormon-...

tehjoker 2y ago

If they target someone unsymathetic, they won't get plaudits. Simple.

surgical_fire 2y ago

> In a lot of ways this is like all the media attention on school shootings: we will see copycats, and the next one may not be targeting an unsympathetic healthcare CEO. Would it target unsympathetic CEOs in other industries? I am just trying to measure the pros and cons here. Jokes aside, that Luigi Mangione is a martyr to some subset of the population is hardly surprising. Unlike school shootings, where the senseless violence victimizes only eminently innocent people, what Mangione did victimizes someone seem by a large section of society as a perpetrator. I agree that it is unsettling, but only in the sense that it feels like some important piece of the social contract has been lost along the way, and it is hard to know where it will end.

ok_dad 2y ago
The social contract was lost when big business and its execs stopped caring about the humans they employ or serve as customers. Eventually, when regular people see that laws and ethics don’t apply to the rich and powerful, they decide they shouldn’t have to follow stupid laws either. The leaders of America started it, of course the followers of America will follow.
antisthenes 2y ago
> Would it target unsympathetic CEOs in other industries? Industries that are essential to living, sure. I think the health insurance industry is so egregious is because you PAY them money and they DENY you health care. It evokes a very strong response, because it can clearly be interpreted as theft. I can't imagine a comparable scenario in e.g. grocery industry where you'd pay for something in a grocery store and get nothing for it.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  Some insurance claims get denied, but plenty of them are approved. It might surprise you to learn that most Americans are satisfied with their health insurance: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/us/elections/health-insurance-polls.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/us/elections/health-insur... If health insurance is as bad as you say, why aren't people just cancelling their plans and paying for everything out of pocket?

harimau777 2y ago

To take a slightly broader perspective: I don't think this is actually particularly new or unusual. Criminal folk heroes have a long history. See for example Robin Hood, The Outlaws of the Marsh, Jessie James, and murder ballads (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_ballad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_ballad).

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Whether popular or not makes no difference. The guy murdered. Nonetheless I also feel a sense of helplessness given the current political climate. I posted once that if you invite violence to dinner you'll find you have a guest unwilling to leave. It was not a popular comment. Most of the responses said something to the effect of, "So you don't think violence ever accomplished anything?" I thought that was orthogonal and was an appalled frankly by the apparent justification for violence. Having said the above though, I am surprised that with so many denied health care and — facing essentially a death sentence — why do we not see more of them going postal?

gruez 2y ago
>Having said the above though, I am surprised that with so many denied health care and — facing essentially a death sentence — why do we not see more of them going postal? Did Mangione's even have personal beef with UNH, or even with the insurance industry? I thought he wasn't covered by UNH, and although he had a botched back surgery, he wasn't denied coverage?
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  Yeah, I don't know. My sense is that he is a very entitled young man though and so, no, he is not someone that would be reacting to his own situation. I didn't mean to imply that he was — but that there are plenty of others though.
  - TMWNN 2y ago
    >Yeah, I don't know. My sense is that he is a very entitled young man though and so, no, he is not someone that would be reacting to his own situation. Mangione is an Ivy League engineer from a wealthy East coast family, while Thompson was a Iowa state school accountant whose father worked on grain elevators.
- tekla 2y ago
  He had nothing to do with UNH. He just really really wanted to kill someone that he didn't like and chose the UNH guy.

happytoexplain 2y ago

>I know this is an unpopular opinion here This always poisons the tone of a comment. Just like, "I know this will get downvoted": You should just state your opinion without proactively casting yourself as the minority voice. It feels like self-pity, and at the same time implicitly colors disagreement with you as dog-piling or talking-down. That said: >Luigi Mangione as martyr figure makes me extremely uncomfortable Is that even a minority opinion? Glorifying assassination should make everybody uncomfortable, no? That's a big, central part of the point of glorifying his crime. >This is a very different situation than the Aaron Swartz Is a comparison to Aaron common? I mean specifically in terms of the imposition of law onto them. I haven't seen that opinion here, personally. Just because people have sympathy for both of them doesn't mean there is an implication that what they each did is comparable. >What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress An extreme one. And not a novel one.

lolinder 2y ago
> This always poisons the tone of a comment. Just like, "I know this will get downvoted": You should just state your opinion without proactively casting yourself as the minority voice. It feels like self-pity, and at the same time implicitly colors disagreement with you as dog-piling or talking-down. I wish it weren't necessary, but it's pretty much the only way to get a minority opinion any traction. It's primes the few who do agree with you to preemptively upvote before the mob of downvotes sets in, and it does also work to reduce the number of reactive downvotes that get added. I try to avoid "I know this will get downvoted" because it's too meta, but yes, it accomplishes the same thing. > Is that even a minority opinion? Glorifying assassination should make everybody uncomfortable, no? That's a big, central part of the point of glorifying his crime. In the comments section of HN, it absolutely has been. Every Mangione thread is filled with his fans, and every comment that critiques the glorification of what he did is mobbed by them.

chrisoverzero 2y ago

> What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? If this is what you are worried about, America is pretty far behind the leading edge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/asia/court-dissolution-unification-church-japan-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/asia/court-dissolution-unific...

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> Luigi Mangione as martyr figure makes me extremely uncomfortable Mangione is viewed sympathetically by like 20% of Americans [1] and about double that fraction among 18 to 29-year olds. You can find similar stats for flat Eartherism (10% yes, 19% including unsure [2]) or Nazism (10 and 17%, respectively) [3]. Essentially, there is no evidence he is a martyr beyond the baseline fraction of crazy beliefs in society. (Note: I am not suggesting he’s viewed favourably by Nazis. Just that everyone has some niche beliefs, some more, some fewer, and they have a weird tendency of distributing such that about a fifth of the population entertains one of the popular ones.) In this case, the Mangione connection will help get the initiative on the ballot before promptly guaranteeing its failure. [1] https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_fWe8hY3.pdf#page12 https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabRepor... [2] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-survey-us-public-beliefs https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-sur... [3] https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1190a1TrumpandCharlottesville.pdf https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1190a1Trum...

kelipso 2y ago
A third of young people aren't flat Earthers or Nazis, what the hell.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > third of young people aren't flat Earthers Just about! “4 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old age group said they actually believe the world is flat. Rather, there seem to be a relatively large number in this age group who are willing to entertain doubts: 9 percent said they had always believed the world was round but were recently having doubts, 5 percent said they had always believed the world was flat but were becoming skeptical of that conclusion and 16 percent just weren't sure” [1]. [1] https://www.livescience.com/62220-millennials-flat-earth-belief.html https://www.livescience.com/62220-millennials-flat-earth-bel...

xracy 2y ago

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -John F. Kennedy The thing about MLK, is that he existed as a backdrop to more violent alternatives. He is celebrated for being the better of those options, but when companies are not willing to negotiate with the nicer option, eventually they will make the violent one inevitable. Additionally, I think the thing people get wrong about the "Luigi as martyr figure" is that UHC is itself a violent organization responsible for many deaths. When you project that you are only able to listen to "profits" and people don't have any way to provide feedback via "profits" to you, then they're going to look for other kinds of speech. And unfortunately, this kind of speech was made clear to work (see insurance companies sitting up and fixing a couple of the policies they had in the pipeline as a result of this action, and people's response to the UHC CEO being not negative). I don't like this direction we're headed in, but I'd be lying if I said I saw other ways to make headway here. Especially given the current administration's interest in regulation.

motorest 2y ago

> What precedent are we setting by explicitly making "murder someone" a viable path to making progress on your personal political agenda? I think you got it backwards. The question you should be asking yourself is why did so many Americans supported and even applauded the idea of murdering a CEO of a medical insurance company. You barely get this level of reaction from condemning sadistic murderers with the death penalty. But when it happened to a specific CEO of a specific healthcare company, you saw a wave of popular support across the US. Why do you think regular working people leading regular working class lives enthusiastically applauded it?

areyouliving 2y ago

I agree, but Luigi only killed one. The insurers murder many and by default torture the entire country constantly. The reason Luigi exists as a positive figure in our zeitgiest is because government is captured by industry and doesn't represent the will of the voting public.