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John H. Richardson was alarmed when his friends and loved ones — “idealistic, well-intentioned” people — started expressing support for Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024.
“There’s an openness to violence that seems to be more intellectual than physical,” he told The Post.
With his new book, “Luigi: The Making and Meaning,” Richardson set out to understand why in the world so many “oddly enough, gentle” Americans are cheering on an accused killer.
Nationally, a staggering 41% of 18- to 29-year-olds agree it is “somewhat” or “completely” acceptable to kill a CEO, according to an Emerson poll conducted the same month as Thompson’s death.
Young people are anxious, angsty and angry — and they place politics at the center of their personal identity.
“There is a sense amongst a lot of young people that the system is not working and that somebody needs to do something — and maybe it’s them,” Richardson said.
Enter Mangione, the handsome, transgressive anti-hero who is their demented Robin Hood.
After digging through Mangione’s digital footprint, Richardson diagnosed the accused killer as suffering from classic Zoomer dread.
“Climate change was just another problem on his existential problem list, which means he lived his whole adult life under the shadow of alarming possibilities,” he writes. “It is really just another example of the world being out of our control, locked into a grim trajectory and incapable of change.”
Gen Z has grown up under the shadow of existential threats and constantly reminded of all the different ways that the world could implode in our lifetime. AI will take all of the jobs, if civil war doesn’t break out first. The gig economy and student debt are insurmountable. Health insurers seem to cover less and less. Maybe climate change will put us out of our misery.
The sense of hopelessness — coupled with a declining faith in free speech and liberal conventions — that too many of my peers share has left them open to the idea that violence might be the only way to shake society out of complacency.
And Mangione, Richardson told me, thought he could be the anarchist to blow it all up: “He’s a computer guy, so he’s really trying to debug society all by himself.”
Previously, in his work as a journalist, Richardson struck up a five-year correspondence with Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. When it came to light that Mangione was a fan of Kaczynski’s manifesto, which the accused described as “prescient,” the author was not entirely surprised.
But Richardson says there’s one critical difference between the two would-be vigilantes.
“Ted could never shake the mad hermit image [while] Luigi looks like a Disney prince and risked everything in a blaze of glory,” he writes. “And so, despite being accused of this bloody deed and also because of it, he becomes Saint Luigi, sanctified on the sacrifice of his promising young life.”
This is very true. Mangione is, frankly, marketable in a social media age.
It’s why people are putting his face on cakes and tattoos and T-shirts and writing him effusive fan letters. It’s why he became a punchline for late-night hosts — and why they can simply refer to Luigi by his first name, and we all know who they mean.
“Handsome outlaws are an act of magic,” Richardson writes. “Somehow, their good looks give us permission to celebrate their violation of the rules we follow. Although never quite like this, with such open enthusiasm and T-shirt sales outside the courtroom, not in the America we thought we knew.”
As shocking as it is, today’s America is one where cheering on a killer isn’t beyond the pale — especially for the young people.
Indeed, beyond his looks, Mangione has struck a chord with Zoomers desperate to feel something real, amidst all the doomscrolling and algorithmic numbness.
Through Mangione, they can be a radical revolutionary while still hiding behind a keyboard.
“Pinning down Luigi’s motive misses the point,” Richardson writes. “Luigi’s elusiveness is what matters. For a growing number of Americans who seem to be vibrating with existential anxieties, he became a screen onto which they projected their fears and dreams.”
English (US)