How Celebrating Luigi Mangione Fuels Trumpism and Impedes Real Social Change

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Now that the dust has begun to settle after the initial excitement and flurry of social media fervor celebrating Luigi Mangione’s murder of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, maybe we can start a conversation assessing this prevalent celebratory response as well as its political significance and political value for imagining and doing the work necessary for meaningful and long-term change to make a more equal U.S. society and political economy that meets the basic needs, including health care, of all Americans.

Look, to be completely honest, I was more than a little entertained initially by the spates of macabre humorous quips populating social media, stuff like, “I’d send my condolences, but they aren’t covered.” When social media users learned of the McDonald’s employee who turned in Mangione, I admit I laughed hard at the post I saw that read, “A Waffle House employee would never . . .” because I love Waffle House.

But let’s face it, as I said, this humor is macabre and comes from a very dark place in the American soul, a place roiling in frustration, pain, anger, desperation, worry, anxiety, fear, and a profound sense of injury, injustice, and powerlessness. In this state of anger and powerlessness, many Americans understandably feel a rush of satisfaction at seeing someone take…