The strange deification of Luigi Mangione

As soon as the shocking video of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s assassination on a New York City street went public, the left began turning the murderer into a folk hero. Before the shooter’s identity was even known, progressives celebrated the act, inventing fictional backstories to glorify the killing as a form of noble revenge.

Now that Luigi Mangione has been apprehended, late-night comedians are swooning over him and progressive fanatics are even tattooing his image on their bodies. The justification for this disturbing behavior is the claim of “obscene profits” made by corrupt health care companies. Yet these same progressives attacked anyone who questioned the COVID-19 vaccine while pharmaceutical companies made record profits.

Progressives may have cheered his alleged choice of target, but Mangione hardly fits the image of a working-class revolutionary.

The truth is darker: The left harbors a deep appetite for political violence and celebrates anyone who harms its perceived enemies.

From the start, Thompson’s murder stood out as bizarre. The video, which showed a calm and methodical killer shooting Thompson in the back, made it clear that this was no random street crime.

Authorities launched a manhunt that ended when customers recognized Mangione at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Police took him into custody without incident.

The fallout has been equally strange. The Altoona Police Department received death threats for arresting Mangione, and the McDonald’s location was flooded with negative online reviews. Meanwhile, false claims circulated online, including a fabricated story that UnitedHealthcare denied Mangione coverage for critical back surgery. Progressives seized on these narratives, desperately twisting the assassination to fit their political agenda.

Mangione had a broad online presence, but it did little to align him with any mainstream political movement. Far from being a desperate victim driven to violence, the alleged assassin came from a wealthy family, attended an elite private school, and earned an Ivy League diploma.

While Mangione harbored a deep hatred for the health care industry, he also appeared to have a general disdain for much of the modern world. Progressives may have cheered his alleged choice of target, but Mangione hardly fits the image of a working-class revolutionary spurred to action by dire circumstances — no matter how much the left wishes to believe otherwise.

Conservatives must recognize that one does not need to be a violent Marxist revolutionary to see that America’s health care system is broken. Americans pay exorbitant amounts for health care. Companies in the industry are often predatory, constantly looking for ways to cut costs and deny coverage.

The system itself is a bureaucratic nightmare, seemingly designed to frustrate patients into abandoning claims. Ballooning costs can destroy the financial future of anyone facing a medical emergency.

Government interference in the industry and the added strain caused by illegal immigration, as individuals use the system without contributing to it, are major contributors to this crisis. However, these factors alone cannot fully explain the disastrous state of health care in America.

People are angry for a reason. If conservatives dismiss their frustrations by labeling anyone who points out the problem a Marxist, they will make a grave error.

The problem isn’t a lack of legitimate reasons to be angry with the state of the health care industry. The problem is that progressives use these grievances as a thin pretext for political violence.

The left has no problem with health care corporations earning obscene profits when it serves a leftist agenda. During the pandemic, pharmaceutical companies pushed vaccines that failed to prevent infection or transmission and caused harm to some patients. These companies made record profits and were granted immunity from legal liability for any harm their products caused.

Progressives didn’t push back against these practices. Instead, they demonized anyone who questioned them. They tried to make vaccines mandatory, destroyed the careers of doctors who spoke out, censored medical facts, and smeared critics as science deniers.

When journalist Christopher Rufo exposed footage of hospital officials boasting about the profits from child transition surgeries — surgeries that make patients dependent for life — progressives ignored it. They didn’t turn on the health care establishment. Instead, they continued pushing for the mutilation of children and attacked anyone who opposed their gender jihad.

If conservatives resorted to violence against a doctor profiting from these surgeries or a pharmaceutical CEO earning money from faulty vaccines, the left would immediately label them deranged terrorists.

While real issues exist within the health care industry, the left holds no principled stance against providers or pharmaceutical companies profiting from misery. Progressives have no objection to corporations earning record profits or receiving legal protection after causing harm — as long as it serves their agenda.

For most on the left, morality boils down to hating whomever the media tells them to hate with no concern for applying a consistent standard.

When a deranged assassin shot at Donald Trump, celebrities told progressives to cheer — and they did. When the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was assassinated, celebrities once again signaled progressives to cheer — and they did.

It really is just that simple.