The rise of the Luigi Mangione hero cult has sharpened the deep divisions within our society, fueled our political animosities, and crystallized the internal contradictions within our government supremacist, anti-capitalist, domestic imperialist cultural order.
Mangione faces charges (including “first degree murder in furtherance of terrorism”) for the killing of Brian Thompson in Manhattan on December 4. Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, the largest healthcare insurance company in the United States. He began working at the company in 2004 and his “annual compensation package” was worth more than $10 million.
Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania on December 9 following a massive state-run manhunt. Putting aside speculation that Mangione is a patsy (or the cops just got the wrong guy), millions of Americans have hailed him as a conquering hero and view Thompson as an avatar of our corrupt and diabolical economic-social order. As far as these Americans are concerned, Thompson got what he deserved.
What we have here is human sacrifice. An anti-capitalist human sacrifice. As Thompson walked to attend an investor’s meeting on his final day, the shooter placed him in the role of scapegoat. Thompson became a ritual substitute, selected for sacred bloodletting.
From a libertarian frame of reference, it is clear that this anti-capitalist sentiment is underpinned by envy and misdirected anger. The French philosopher René Girard argued there is a direct link between human envy and human sacrifice. As the historian of reason Mark Ajita put it:
“For Girard, this motivated all human behavior…envy and the desire to imitate, which then becomes so toxic that people then have to engage in redemptive acts of violence.”
Ajita said Girard called envy “mimetics,” which is the kind of confusing rhetorical move one expects from the French. Still, his work is worth confronting since it has influenced both Ajita and Darryl Cooper (aka Martyr Made), the man Tucker Carlson recently called “the most important historian in the United States.”
In Carlson’s now infamous interview with Cooper, the two men discussed a wide range of topics. Cooper’s comments about World War II and Winston Churchill got the most attention (and the most backlash), but Cooper also spoke at length about Girard’s ideas:
“And [Girard] points to…examples throughout history and ancient mythology…about how there’s some problem that, was, you know, a plague is…plaguing Thebes…And what do you know? We found the culprit. We found the perpetrator, the one who had, like, brought this curse upon the city because of his own private sin or whatever it was. And we got rid of that person, and now everything is actually better. And now the plague went away…”
Ask an anti-capitalist what is wrong in America, and they’ll lecture you about economic inequality and maybe even structural racism, eg ‘Brian Thompson was a white man who made millions!’ As economist Thomas Sowell observed:
“Intellectuals’ obsession with income statistics—calling envy ‘social justice’—ignores vast differences in productivity that are far more fundamental to everyone’s well-being. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg has ruined many economies.”
So, there’s the envy. But there is also misdirected anger. Americans don’t just imagine they are being screwed by the system. Americans are being screwed by the system. What most of them don’t realize is that it is the state putting the screws to them, not capitalism.
Thompson’s murder fits perfectly within our great domestic, imperialist passion play. The state is God, the corporation is Satan, and capitalism is the eternal scapegoat. And just as the Christian God created the angel Lucifer, who then rebelled, fell, and was imprisoned in Hell, the state’s mythology portrays it as creating the corporate form. This part of the myth even fooled this author. Libertarian Institute Executive Editor Sheldon Richman set the record straight:
“The anti-corporate intelligentsia prefers to think that corporations owe their existence and special status as separate fictitious persons to the government, which grants them favors denied to others. This is false. Every feature of the corporate association has resulted from the free contractual relationships that evolved over many centuries.”
In the wake of Thompson’s murder, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was interviewed by Huffpost. She said:
“Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”
Warren was criticized for her statement and later “sought to clarify” it to avoid any interpretation other than that murder is never justified. We can embrace that position. Brian Thompson was our fellow human and our fellow American. And he was gunned down like this was nineteenth century Russia.
We can also acknowledge Warren’s point that people can “be pushed only so far” and can “lose faith” in government. Yet we can also understand that the state isn’t struggling to contain the demon of capitalism. The state is the demon. The state is the reason health care and health insurance (not the same thing by the way) are so complicated, so frustrating, so expensive, so inefficient, and so broken.
The sacrifice of Thompson might have satiated America’s domestic imperialist blood lust for now, but it has done nothing to improve our society. The public has tasted the sweet blood of a ritual substitute, and eventually more sacrifices will be demanded. More government control will be called for. More attacks on the market will be welcomed.
Luigi Mangione (or whoever did it) didn’t just use inappropriate means to fight his enemy. He didn’t even know his enemy (if he, or whoever did it, really did it to fight the system). Millions of Americans have internalized this false mythology. The rest of us cannot afford to make the same mistake.
