Luigi Mangione | ‘Popular’ suspect

Not long after an election that polarised the nation and threw up Donald Trump as the winner, civil society in the U.S. stands divided yet again over a man: 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who allegedly shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a hotel in Manhattan on December 4.

Mangione was picked up from a McDonald’s outlet in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on December 9 when a member of the restaurant staff spotted and identified him.

Also read: Back trouble and brain fog bothered suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing, his posts show

From ridiculing the employee and McDonalds to lionising Mangione as an “anti-capitalist” hero and describing his act as “vigilante justice”, social media was awash with reactions that has largely glorified the killing of the 50-year-old and father of two.

So much so that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro felt compelled to spell out the morality involved in the situation: “Hear me on this: He is no hero. The real hero in this story is the person who called 911 at McDonald’s this morning.” “We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” Mr. Shapiro said.

That it took a Governor’s statement for people to see through a crime that happened in broad daylight is a telling sign. Regardless, observers and columnists attribute the sympathy pouring in for Mangione to the hatred reserved by the public for insurance companies.

Among other evidence recovered from the crime scene were bullet casings that had the words ‘Deny’, ‘Defend’ and ‘Depose’ written on them — a play on the phrase ‘Delay, Deny, Defend’, apparent tactics used by insurance firms to refuse claims. Also found in Mangione’s possession was a hand-written manifesto that criticised American companies’ corporate greed. “Frankly these parasites simply had it coming,” the note stated. UnitedHealthcare, however, has said Mangione was not its customer.

As police try and figure out if Mangione, who had a back problem and did correction procedure, acted out of self-interest or handed out “vigilante justice”, public support has swelled. His X account grew by more than 4,00,000 followers since the shooting, close to $31,000 was raised on GiveSendGo and “#FreeLuigi“ and “hot assassin” tags spread on social media — with engagement levels crossing what was witnessed during Donald Trump’s assassination attempt.

In Mangione, people found a “folk hero” who stood up for them against an industry that has long become a target of public ire. With an estimated market valuation of $560 billion, UnitedHealth, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, ranks 19th on Forbes’ list of the world’s biggest companies. However, look past the insurance firm to see that the individuals involved are mired in a strange paradox.

According to a Reuters report, Thompson had a modest working-class upbringing in rural Iowa. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Iowa in 1997. He is a certified public accountant and worked for six years at the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) before joining the United Group in 2004 as Director of Corporate Development, according to Forbes.

This is in stark contrast to the privileged upbringing of Mangione, someone believed to have carried out an “anti-capitalist” attack. Born into a prominent real-estate family in Baltimore, Mangione received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania with an interest in computer science. He also served as head counsellor at a pre-college programme at Standford. The tuition fee at the high school he attended stands at $37,690 this year. He worked as a software engineer at TrueCar, an online marketplace based in California. For a brief while, he stayed at a co-living space in Honolulu, Hawaii, for $2,000 per month.

Six months ago, he fell off the public radar with his mother filing a missing complaint in November.

Investigators are scouring his social media accounts for further clues and a concrete motive. Save for a goodreads account where he posted a review commending the “prescient” nature of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s Industrial Society and its future, Mangione’s political standing can only be described as heterodox at best.

The fact that Mangione’s motive and ideology have not been deciphered so far is worrisome for it then leaves only one plausible explanation. Much like the 2021 Capitol attack, it shows the public’s eroding trust in institutions. A fallout of that is the common man disregarding civic sense and becoming emboldened to take the law into his own hands. Mangione, who spoke about a “symbolic takedown” in his manifesto, then becomes a hero for those disenchanted with the system.