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brian thompson
'Luigi: The Musical' Premiere Run Already Sold Out in San Francisco
"This show is not a celebration of violence of any kind, nor is it an attempt to pass judgment on an ongoing legal matter," say the producers. "Instead, Luigi: the Musical uses satire to ask deeper cultural questions."
May 02, 2025
A stage musical based on the life and actions of accused murderer Luigi Mangione, charged with killing UnitedHealth chief executive Brian Thompson earlier this year, will debut in San Francisco next month—and the run of the show featuring the high-profile case is already sold out.
Mangione—who has taken on cult status in some quarters over the brazen and cold-blooded killing that served to highlight the nation's cruel, profit-driven healthcare system—is facing a possible death sentence if found guilty on federal charges related to Thompson's murder.
"Why did a figure like Luigi become a kind of folk hero in certain corners of the internet? What does that say about how we see institutions in America today?"
The producers "Luigi: The Musical," who describe the play as a "wildly irreverant, razor-sharp comedy" about the "alleged corporate assassin turned accidental folk hero," also acknowledge how inherently controversial and provocative the show will be. According to the play's website:
This show is not a celebration of violence of any kind, nor is it an attempt to pass judgment on an ongoing legal matter. Our hearts go out to the family of Brian Thompson, and we acknowledge the pain and complexity surrounding this case.
Instead, Luigi: the Musical uses satire to ask deeper cultural questions. Why did this case strike such a chord with so many people? Why did a figure like Luigi become a kind of folk hero in certain corners of the internet? What does that say about how we see institutions in America today?
The show will run at the Taylor Street Theater in the city, premiering on June 13th for an initial two-week run. As of this writing, all shows are sold out, but new dates for an extended run are set to be announced.
Produced by Caleb Zeringue and directed by Nova Bradford, the script was written by the pair alongside Arielle Johnson and Andre Margatini. The original music and lyrics for the show were composed by Johnson and Bradford.
In the show's imagination, Mangione finds himself in a jail cell with convicted crypto-banker Sam Bankman-Fried and indicted hip-hop producer Sean "Diddy" Combs. While absurd in some ways, the origin story of the play is based on the fact that all three men were, for a period, all held at the same detention facility.
In an interview last week with the San Francisco Chronicle, Zeringue said all three men "represent these big pillars of institutions in society that are failing in their trust: healthcare, Hollywood, and then big tech."
Bradford, also speaking to the Chronicle, said that the play seeks to explore society's tendency "to project meaning onto these types of figures," but that the show is "not valorizing" any of them, nor "trivializing any of their action or alleged actions."
"Our hope is that Luigi: the Musical," say the producers in their show notes, "makes people laugh—and think. We're not here to make moral proclamations. We're here to explore, with humor and heart, how it feels to live through a time when the systems we're supposed to trust have stopped feeling trustworthy."
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Trump DOJ to Seek Death Penalty for Luigi Mangione
Calling the death penalty "an intolerably cruel and unusual punishment," one socialist writer said that the European Union should offer the alleged assassin asylum.
Apr 01, 2025
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday that she is directing federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in the case of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.
Federal prosecutors in New York City filed murder charges against Mangione in mid-December after Mangione was arrested in a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days after Thompson was gunned down in front of a hotel in midtown Manhattan on December 4.
UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurer in the country, though the company has said Mangione was never insured by them.
A grand jury in New York state indicted Mangione with first-degree murder "in furtherance of an act of terrorism" and second-degree murder, in addition to other, lesser charges also in mid-December. Mangione pleaded not guilty to those state charges, but has not entered a plea for his federal charges, according to PBS News.
"Luigi Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson—an innocent man and father of two young children—was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America," Bondi said in a statement. "After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President [Donald] Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again."
U.S. President Donald Trump, who oversaw a spate of executions carried out at an unprecedented rate during the final months of his initial administration, signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House that directs the Justice Department to seek out the death penalty in federal cases when possible.
Mangione, whose case triggered a wave of dark humor and vitriol directed at the for-profit healthcare industry, was compared to "Robin Hood" in a December intelligence report compiled by a regional intelligence center, according to The American Prospect.
In a Substack post published Tuesday, the socialist writer Carl Beijer wrote that the European Union (E.U.) must offer asylum to Mangione.
"Regardless of the merits of the case for or against Mangione, the death penalty remains an intolerably cruel and unusual punishment," wrote Beijer. "Given its commitment to using 'all available instruments' towards the abolition of capital punishment, the E.U. should publicly condemn the prosecution of Luigi Mangioni; should immediately offer him political asylum in defense of his basic right to life; and should negotiate with the U.S. Department of Justice to secure his release."
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UnitedHealth Exemplifies How the Industry Prioritizes Profit Over Care
The provider has—for good reason—become the most powerful lightning rod for patient and medical staff critiques of how private insurers operate.
Feb 01, 2025
Healthcare is big business in the United States. So big it can be hard to wrap your head around.
America’s largest healthcare company, the UnitedHealth Group, pulled in over $100 billion in revenue in just the fourth quarter of 2024 alone. For the full year, the giant’s insurance division, UnitedHealthcare, just reported record revenue of $298.2 billion.
These staggering revenue totals actually fell below investor expectations. Right after the announcement, UnitedHealth Group shares slipped 6% on the New York Stock Exchange.
The outpouring of anger after the December killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—anger not at the shooting but at the company Thompson represented—shows just how many Americans are currently suffering under our privatized healthcare system.
That tells you a lot about what’s important in the healthcare industry: profit, not care. Health insurance companies in particular can only profit by paying out less in claims than they collect in premiums. And that means denying patients coverage for the care they need.
Just outside the New York Stock Exchange, victims of our for-profit healthcare system—doctors and patients alike—recently braved freezing temperatures to call out the suffering that engineered UnitedHealth’s exorbitant earnings.
One of those demonstrators, Jenn Coffey, has been battling complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a condition so incredibly painful that it’s often called the “suicide disease.”
UnitedHealth denied her the prior authorization needed to have her critically important treatment adequately covered. “UnitedHealthcare would rather leave me in torture than grant me the peace my infusions bring,” says Coffey. “I’m asking for a life worth dignity. I’m left begging for a life worth living.”
Several other speakers shared their deeply personal experiences with a healthcare system that far too often treats patients as disposable.
Dr. Toutou Moussa Diallo, a New York-based researcher and healthcare activist, detailed how insurance denials led to subpar treatment for his broken ankle that only made the initial injury more debilitating. Nephrologist Cheryl Kunis shared the story of a patient who died after UnitedHealthcare refused to cover a PET scan of a malignant neck tumor.
These experiences amount to much more than isolated one-off incidents. The outpouring of anger after the December killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—anger not at the shooting but at the company Thompson represented—shows just how many Americans are currently suffering under our privatized healthcare system.
The ongoing campaign protesting how UnitedHealth does business began well before Thompson’s headline-grabbing killing. The Care Over Cost mobilization, led by People’s Action, has been organizing rallies protesting America’s biggest private insurers for years.
UnitedHealth has—for good reason—become the most powerful lightning rod for patient and medical staff critiques of how private insurers operate. The company’s gargantuan profits rest on decisions that regularly exploit patients at every opportunity.
Just a few snippets from recent news accounts offer a vivid picture about how UnitedHealth goes about making its billions.
UnitedHealth Group’s pharmacy benefit manager, Optum RX, marked up some cancer treatments by over 1,000%. UnitedHealthcare systematically limited access to critical treatments for children with autism to cut costs. And along with two other insurers, the company intentionally denied nursing care to patients covered by Medicare Advantage—all to maximize profit.
And how has the UnitedHealth Group been spending all its ill-gotten gains? One telling stat: UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty pocketed an astonishing $23.5 million in 2023 compensation.
As the rally in front of the New York Stock Exchange ended, protesters called on UnitedHealthcare to publicly release its claim denial rates, oppose federal tax cuts that would result in Medicaid service reductions, and end the company’s care-denying prior authorization requirements.
Those eminently reasonable demands for the company. Meanwhile, the rest of us should consider whether we want healthcare to be a tool for the public good—or just private profit.
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And the Winners of the 2024 Shkreli Awards for Worst Healthcare Profiteering Are...
"All these stories paint a picture of a healthcare industry in desperate need of transformation," said the head of the think tank behind the awards.
Jan 07, 2025
The "winners" of the annual Shkreli Awards—named after notorious "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli and given to the 10 "worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare"—include a Texas medical school that sold body parts of deceased people without relatives' consent, an alleged multibillion-dollar catheter scam, an oncologist who subjected patients to unnecessary cancer treatments, and a "monster monopoly" insurer.
The Shkreli Awards, now in their eighth year, are given annually by the Lown Institute, a Massachusetts-based think tank "advocating bold ideas for a just and caring system for health." A panel of 20 expert judges—who include physicians, professors, activists, and others—determine the winners.
This year's awardees are:
10: The University of North Texas Health Science Center "dissected and distributed unclaimed bodies without properly seeking consent from the deceased or their families" and supplied the parts "to medical students as well as major for-profit ventures like Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson," reporting revealed.
9:
Baby tongue-tie cutting procedures are "being touted as a cure for everything from breastfeeding difficulties to sleep apnea, scoliosis, and even constipation"—despite any conclusive evidence that the procedure is effective.
8: Zynex Medical is a company facing scrutiny for its billing practices related to nerve stimulation devices used for pain management.
7: Insurance giant Cigna is under fire for billing a family nearly $100,000 for an infant's medevac flight.
6: Seven suppliers allegedly ran a multibillion-dollar urinary catheter billing scam that affected hundreds of thousands of Medicare patients.
5: Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico allegedly refused cancer treatment "to patients or demanding upfront payments, even from those with insurance."
4: Dr. Thomas C. Weiner is a Montana oncologist who allegedly "subjected a patient to unnecessary cancer treatments for over a decade," provided "disturbingly high doses of barbiturates to facilitate death in seriously ill patients, when those patients may not have actually been close to death," and "prescribed high doses of opioids to patients that did not need them." Weiner denies any wrongdoing.
3: Pharma giant Amgen was accused of pushing 960-milligram doses of its highly toxic cancer drug Lumakras, when "a lower 240mg dose offers similar efficacy with reduced toxicity"—but costs $180,000 less per patient annually at the lower dose.
2: UnitedHealth allegedly exploited "its vast physician network to maximize profits, often at the expense of patients and clinicians," including by pressuring doctors "to reduce time with patients and to practice aggressive medical coding tactics that make patients seem as sick as possible" in order to earn higher reimbursements from the federal government."
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1: Steward Health Care CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre was accused of orchestrating "a dramatic healthcare debacle by prioritizing private equity profits over patient care" amid "debt and sale-leaseback schemes" and a bankruptcy that "left hospitals gutted, employees laid off, and communities underserved" as he reportedly walked away "with more than $250 million over the last four years as hospitals tanked."
"All these stories paint a picture of a healthcare industry in desperate need of transformation," Lown Institute president Dr. Vikas Saini said during the award ceremony, according toThe Guardian.
"Doing these awards every year shows us that this is nothing new," he added. "We're hoping that these stories illuminate what changes are needed."
The latest Shkreli Awards came just weeks after the brazen assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealth subsidiary UnitedHealthcare. Although alleged gunman Luigi Mangione has pleaded not guilty, his reported manifesto—which rails against insurance industry greed—resonated with people across the country and sparked discussions about the for-profit healthcare system.
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Health Workers Plan Global Day of Action to Demand 'End to the Genocide in Gaza'
"After witnessing 15 months of relentless violence and destruction in Gaza, we can no longer carry on as if everything is normal," said organizer Doctors Against Genocide.
Jan 03, 2025
As Israel's 15-month annihilation of Gaza continues with intensified attacks on medical infrastructure and workers, an international coalition of advocacy groups is planning a
#SickFromGenocide global day of action on Monday "to take a stand against the targeted attacks on healthcare."
Organizer Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) and co-sponsors including Healthcare Workers for Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, Do No Harm Coalition, Labor for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council, and others are calling on healthcare workers around the world to take a day of mental health leave "to reflect on the immense moral injury of funding a genocide and engage the most important aspect of treatment: publicly demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza."
Monday's day of action is set to include a "Sick From Genocide" global vigil and pop-up clinics in cities across the United States, whose government gives Israel billions of dollars in weapons support each year.
"For 15 months, we have watched in horror as children and families have been obliterated by unrelenting attacks," DAG said in a statement Friday. "Hospitals, the bedrock of lifesaving care, have been turned into death traps. The recent bombing and burning of Kamal Adwan Hospital and the arrest of our colleague, the pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, exemplify the deliberate targeting of healthcare workers and facilities—tactics designed to accelerate the annihilation and forced displacement of the Palestinian people in Gaza."
DAG member Dr. Rupa Marya—a University of California, San Francisco professor of medicine who's currently on paid suspension after questioning how to manage students coming to U.S. schools from a zone with an active genocide where military service is mandatory—told Common Dreams this week that healthcare professionals should "take a mental health break to grieve and take care of ourselves. Let's call in sick on January 6th. We are sick from genocide."
"We are burned out from 15 months of these images and our humanity being denied in our places of work, where we are being silenced, we are being framed as 'haters' for standing against a genocide," she advised.
"What we're asking people to do, is get your friends together, and start a pop-up clinic, set up a free clinic in the street," Marya continued. "Are other people sick from genocide? Come, we'll take care of you. Do people need free healthcare? Come, we'll take care of you."
"We need to demand that our institutions of care cut off relationships with a nation that is actively committing genocide," she asserted. "We need to demand that the United States stop sending arms to Israel. We send billions and billions of dollars to Israel to arm itself while we have people not getting healthcare in the United States."
"We have record numbers of people in the streets, many of them who have lost their homes because the most common cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is medical debt," Marya noted. "So we can't even fund our own healthcare here, while we're sending money to Israel, where they have universal healthcare."
"Let's start showing people what a different healthcare system would look like based in a moral commitment to care, based on our love for our communities, and based on justice," she said. "That is the healthcare system that we need."
"Why are we spending our money destroying another people's healthcare when we can use that money to be taking care of our own here?"
Referring to last month's assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, Marya added: "And if you don't believe me, look what happened to that CEO. We don't want to see political violence here. We don't want people to have to get murdered for us to understand how desperate people are for healthcare."
"So," she asked, "why are we spending our money destroying another people's healthcare when we can use that money to be taking care of our own here?"
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Murder of Health Insurance CEO Exposes Depth of Rage Over Corporate Greed
The killing of Brian Thompson, as horrendous as it was, forced us to confront the injustices we’ve been taught to tolerate.
Jan 02, 2025
Call him a misguided hero or villain, but the man who killed the United Healthcare CEO struck a nerve, exposing a deep rage shared by many Americans across the political spectrum—anger at an industry that earns obscene profits from the suffering of others. His chilling act shifted the national conversation from immigration to corporate greed. Finally.
For too long, Americans have hesitated to criticize the super-rich. Chalk it up to our tribalist nature that has so many convinced that our financial struggles are caused not by wealth hoarding but by those we view as outside our clan.
History offers many examples. In Nazi Germany, Jews were blamed for a financial depression triggered by the American stock market crash. My parents and grandmother barely escaped; many in my family did not.
Decades later, Ronald Reagan handed the wealthy the largest tax cuts in U.S. history while vilifying the “Welfare Queen” who leached from the feeding trough of “Big Government.”
This racist caricature was meant to distract from policies that began a 40-year transfer of wealth from the 90 percent to the one percent, producing the largest wealth gap in a century. It’s a story about the undeserving poor vs. the deserving rich.
Today, we face a similar narrative. Immigrants are blamed both for stealing jobs and freeloading despite their essential role in propping up our economy given our shrinking workforce. After being fed a steady anti-immigration media diet, it’s not surprising that nearly four out of five Republicans support placing undocumented immigrants in internment camps.
The greater the wealth imbalance, the more the wealthy need to distort the truth. They peddle the long-discredited Trickle-Down theory, claiming that what benefits them benefits us all. But rising tides don’t lift all boats when some people have no boat at all, or when their boats are sinking because the superyachts are capsizing small craft in their massive wake.
We have to stop believing that billionaires have working people’s interests at heart. In fact, they’re mutually exclusive. A gangbuster stock market depends on keeping wages low and unions banished. Outsized campaign contributions ensure that corporate taxes are slashed and regulations meant to keep us healthy, safe, and not impoverished are gutted.
It makes complete sense that the wealth lobby exploits fears of “socialism” to keep people voting against their own interests. It’s no coincidence the U.S. remains the only developed nation without universal healthcare. This is where our anger should be directed.
But redirecting anger is not easy. Six of the richest US corporations control 90 percent of our media and their profits depend on algorithms and news coverage designed to keep us divided, misinformed, and distracted from this billionaire plunder. “You know the media has failed,” says essayist Rebecca Solnit, “when people are more concerned that a trans girl might play on a softball team than that the climate crisis will destroy our planet.”
During the next four years it will be critical to get people to see through this deception. When we start feeling the fallout from a second Trump term, the scapegoating will intensify. Tariffs, more tax cuts for the rich, and the loss of immigrant labor will send prices soaring and balloon the deficit. Many may lose healthcare, Social Security, and worker protections. The wealth lobby will no doubt point fingers elsewhere.
Change is possible though. As a grant writer for 30 years, I’ve seen campaigns shift public opinion on issues like marriage equality, net neutrality, and climate change. Recently, several states won historic economic reforms after decades of trying. In Massachusetts, RiseUpMass won the nation’s sixth millionaire’s tax by debunking claims it would harm retirees.
In Washington state, the Balance Our Tax Code, a coalition of over 80 diverse groups, from home health aide workers to members of the Yakima Nation, was able pass a capital gains tax, calling out Amazon and Microsoft for avoiding their share of taxes. “The biggest lesson we learned,” said campaign communications manager Reiny Cohen “was that when we come together and tell the same story, lawmakers have no choice but to listen.”
In other words, changing minds requires a coordinated echo chamber. The #MeToo movement showed how the right framing, amplified through the media, can shift perspectives and galvanize action. Imagine if we could help more people connect the dots between stagnant wages, failing schools, a burning planet, unaffordable housing, and the greed of the one percent.
But the message must go beyond bashing billionaires. It must present a compelling vision of what is possible if we stand up against the ultra rich. The We Make Minnesota coalition was able to pass a tax increase on the wealthiest one percent by countering anti-Somali rhetoric with a “We’re Better Off Together” message. Instead of using a “Stop the Cuts” framework, the campaign emphasized the subsidized health care, free preschool, and tuition-free college programs the state is now able to offer.
This isn’t about destroying capitalism. A healthy balance between a free market and protective government is essential. But when the richest among us prioritize profit over the well-being of the majority, it’s no longer about politics—it’s about survival.
The murder of the United Healthcare CEO, as horrendous as it was, forced us to confront the injustices we’ve been taught to tolerate. This moment must unite us against the true enemies of the American dream: unchecked greed and exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. We can either remain manipulated by scapegoating and fear or see the truth and demand change. Only then can we build a society where no one feels driven to such desperate measures again.
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Americans Are Angry About Their Health Insurance—With Good Reason
As a physician, I have seen patients suffer and die in order to pad the bottom lines of corporate health insurers—and in recent years I have seen this problem getting much worse.
Jan 01, 2025
How should we react when a man is shot to death on the street on his way to work? Our humanity tells us that we should be shocked and horrified—and feel that something is deeply wrong with such a brazen act of murder. Ideally, we would do what we could to help sooth the survivors, condemn the violence, and bring the perpetrator to justice.
So why did hundreds of thousands of people have the exact opposite reaction when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was executed in New York City last month? Because Americans are furious with health insurance corporations—and they have every right to be.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, many Americans took to social media not to mourn, but to celebrate. Caustic posts about prior authorization and denied medical claims were common. Sympathetic statements were met with rancor—and in the case of UnitedHealth Group’s own statement, over 70,000 “laugh reactions” before the company made that tally private. Even verbose political figures like Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump declined to comment for days. This shooting touched a raw nerve.
The health insurance industry doesn’t have a communications problem, it has a profiteering problem—and no amount of marketing will convince people who have already been burned.
As a physician who’s treated countless victims of gun violence, and who’s life’s work is to care for all of my patients, I found this response to be deeply unnerving. But I also can’t waive it away with simple explanations like online radicalization or trolling. Something much deeper is at play.
For decades, health insurance corporations like United have been growing more powerful and more profitable. How do they generate these profits? By taking in as much money as possible in premiums and paying out as little as possible in medical claims. Over time, they have tried everything from requiring “prior authorization” of care, to excluding high-quality providers from their networks, to imposing a Byzantine series of charges including ever-growing copays, coinsurance, and deductibles. When all else fails, many insurers simply deny claims.
Behind each of these practices are millions of Americans who are made to suffer. I hear these stories routinely in my practice, and they never become easier to stomach. I have seen patients with aggressive cancer who avoided seeing a doctor for months because they feared bankruptcy; patients with chronic conditions like diabetes who are denied treatments that would improve their quality of life; and gunshot victims whose fight to recover and gain a semblance of normalcy is complicated by their health plans saying no, no, and no again.
I have seen patients suffer and die in order to pad the bottom lines of corporate health insurers—and in recent years I have seen this problem getting much worse.
These are the stories that Americans are sharing in this fraught moment. We have to ask ourselves: Are we listening? And what are we going to do about it?
Insurers like UnitedHealthcare will have their own responses. Their PR teams will no doubt work overtime to marginalize aggrieved voices and to highlight what they consider to be the “value” of their health plans. Expect to see glossy commercials and towering billboards touting the “peace of mind” that Americans should enjoy knowing that their medical needs are “covered.” But the health insurance industry doesn’t have a communications problem, it has a profiteering problem—and no amount of marketing will convince people who have already been burned.
Behind the scenes, corporate insurers will no doubt lobby for the preferential treatment they have come to expect. Our newly elected Congress may acquiesce, or they may decide that the industry needs to be regulated—a strategy that has failed to live up to its promise.
Republicans and Democrats have made separate attempts to combine federal requirements with federal largesse in order to make corporate health insurers play nice. But both the Affordable Care Act and the Medicare Advantage program have only succeeded in ballooning the profits of firms like United—without improving Americans’ health or sparing their wallets.
It’s also clear that violence is not the answer, both on a purely human level and because corporate insurers will simply not be moved. UnitedHealthcare will have a new CEO in short order, and it will be that person’s responsibility to boost profits and make shareholders wealthier. Responding to patients’ cries will not serve these ends, so it is not in the cards.
What would help is a proven reform proposal that is long overdue: a single-payer national health program. Such a system would provide universal coverage and comprehensive benefits—with zero out-of-pocket costs. It could be easily implemented given the gargantuan sums we spend on healthcare in this country, and it would be a boon for those who are suffering, and for those who are fearful.
Americans are crying out in pain—and are recognizing that they are not alone in their pain. We should listen to these cries and we should finally, after decades of delay, do something about it.
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The Wrath and Rage of Trump's America
If there is a lesson to draw from the outcome of the 2024 general election, short of giving up on politics, it is the need to cultivate a thicker, stronger democratic character.
Dec 30, 2024
A mob overruns the U.S. Capitol, prompted by the country’s outgoing and now re-elected president. A lone gunman vents his wrath by assassinating health-insurance CEO Brian Thompson and is cheered on social media. These are two among many examples of the eruption of political violence.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren allowed that the shooting of Thompson was a “visceral response” to “vile practices” in the country’s health-care system, a response that should be taken as a “warning” not to push people too far. “Violence is never the answer,” she added, “never a justification for murder.” The immorality of murder had to be stated. It could not be taken for granted.
Rage is unleashed among us. Unrestrained anger and furious violence mark our troubled times and signal the broken state of the body politic. This is not history’s first outburst of political rage; thus, it is important for us to recognize the present frenzy for what it is.
What is this scourge?
Rage is raw emotion—a toxic mixture of frustration, fear, anger, and hatred that can trigger uninhibited violence. Fury suppresses reason while focusing narrowly on targets of hatred. More than just an individual aberration, it is a cultural phenomenon, a socio-political breach of existent norms and constraints, the vehicle of demagoguery, the engine of war propaganda, the recourse of political movements that have renounced nonviolence. Once unleashed, fury seeks vengeance by mayhem and annihilation.
Are we about to succumb collectively to a culture of hatred as we incline toward authoritarianism? Can we find a way out of these dark times, out of this neurotic attachment to the hate-driven construction of a scapegoat enemy?
Samuel Wells, in his 2023 essay entitled “The Emotion Standing in the Way of Peace,” depicts vividly the deadly dynamic of rage. In the exhilarating moment of an “intoxication of indignant furor,” when “a red mist descends,” we lose “all rational faculties.” All sense of restraint is abandoned in “our rampaging quest for destruction and vengeance.” We tell ourselves that destroying everything in our path will restore justice. Nuance is absent from this justificative story; the raw narrative reduces to a “bellicose roar”—a scream to resolve every wrong by obliterating an enemy.
Rage carries a mythic charge of avenging injustice. Erinyes were the avenging goddesses in ancient Greece, the personification of righteous justice, known variously as the Furies. Their enduring spirit is a formative expression of rage. “Among all the gods, monsters, and spirits,” Mike Greenburg observes, these goddesses of the dark realm “with their particularly harsh view of justice” were “among the most terrifying.” Their calling was to hunt, punish, and torment wrongdoers until they died in agony and then to continue tormenting them in the afterlife. Orestes, pursued for the crime of matricide, could be saved from the Furies and exonerated only by the intervention of Athena who ordered his trial by a panel of twelve Athenian citizens. The Furies were tempered by a nascent democratic act.
Yet, democracy itself is victim to rage when anger, stoked by political elites, becomes an omnipresent force of politics. Political tolerance, on which democratic society is premised, succumbs to a profound antagonism between “us” and “them.” Rage undercuts the citizenry’s commitment to democratic norms and values (See Steven W. Webster, American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2020; and also Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad, Raised to Rage: The Politics of Anger and the Roots of Authoritarianism. MIT Press, 2016).
The mythic force of righteous rage corrupts the pursuit of justice by resorting to means that pervert professed ends. The rhetoric of vengeance whips up an authoritarian insolence. Democratic values are debased, and democratic practices are diminished. Deliberation is silenced. Justice is defiled. The common good is sacrificed. Democratic polity is lost. Violence prevails, except by divine intervention, deus ex machina.
What explains this dysfunction?
The present demagogic moment reflects and exacerbates deep tensions created by economic displacement, demographic shift, and mass migration in a context of divisive new media that breed disinformation and construct opinion silos. The country’s loss of its imperial grip on world order is mirrored domestically in the destabilization of its timeworn racial hierarchy. Faith in the system is stretched to the breaking point. Tearing down a failing establishment feels right to the disaffected public that this November returned an authoritarian demagogue to the White House. Rage is the noxious product of systemic insecurity.
Wrath now dominates American politics. That has not always been the case, nor did it come about suddenly in the present instance. The country gradually changed over decades, argues anthropologist Peter Wood (Wrath: America Enraged, Encounter Books, 2021), from a nation that preferred self-control to one that relies on anger to wield political power. But to assume a national preference for self-control, Wood must overlook a history of national rage that includes, for example, the anticommunist McCarthyism of the late 1940s and the 1950s, the preceding Red Scare of 1917-1920, and multiple outbreaks of Ku Klux Klan domestic terrorism in the 1860s, 1920s-30s, and 1950s-1960s against Black Americans and other minorities. Unfortunately, Wood’s desire to celebrate American Greatness requires him to overlook these malign features of U.S. history.
Wood tells his story of civility’s current decline from the perspective of a scholar who sees the threat of righteous anger as emanating from the political left rather than the right. These are the barbarians, he believes, who use anger to acquire power and pervert American culture. Wood sees himself as a higher-education watchdog because the university is the point of origin, he maintains, for nearly all the bad ideas (such as critical race theory, White racism, climate alarmism, and gun control) that blight contemporary American culture. Wrath is a dangerous weapon of resistance, but in Wood’s view it is justified to save the country and its civilization from the ostentatious anger of progressive ideologues. They are the malignant force that provokes the justified wrath of ordinary Americans who have been denied “a legitimate voice in their own government” (p. vii). Echoing the interwar “conservative revolutionaries” who paved the way for fascism in 1930’s Europe, Wood stands for the defeat, and indeed the eradication, of progressivism in all its forms.
Here, boldly set out, is wrath’s circular raison d'être of rage on rage. Fury is acceptable in the service of the right cause, Wood insists, in response to the adversary’s perceived hostility. Those on the left, whom he accuses of taking sadistic delight in thwarting the popular will and harming the republic, deserve the wrath of the Furies. Yet, this harsh measure of justice is based on the troublesome premise of an absolute distinction between good and evil, a judgment at odds with the ethos of contingency, fallibility, deliberation, and the tolerance of a broader, more nuanced perspective that is at the heart of any meaningful democracy.
Taking the measure of social rage, sociologist Bonnie Berry observes that besides violence, per se, it encompasses “selfishness, rudeness, short-sidedness, aggression, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness.” The expression of rage, “replete with absolutisms and over-simplification,” is fraught with distortions and distractions irrelevant to addressing serious social problems. Demagoguery prompts a disenchanted public to target scapegoats based on their nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other markers of difference. The distraction of these socially created enemies leaves the ultrapowerful in charge and unaccountable. All of this makes social rage appear bigger than it is, Berry argues. Its “vociferousness, exaggeration, loudness, and vivid imagery” is a matter of “impression management” that makes it seem “pervasive and powerful”—and thus beyond resistance (Social Rage: Emotion and Cultural Conflict, Taylor and Francis, 1999, pp. x, 13-14).
Yet, questions remain: Are we about to succumb collectively to a culture of hatred as we incline toward authoritarianism? Can we find a way out of these dark times, out of this neurotic attachment to the hate-driven construction of a scapegoat enemy?
The country’s thin veneer of democracy has not held up well to the surge of tyranny’s rage, a rage that has intensified.
Such questions are better raised than answered by Willard Gaylin with his focus on individual psychosis and paranoia, but he does point to social conditions, economic factors, and religious and political institutions that cultivate and exploit rage more broadly. The great danger, Gaylin concludes, lies with those who “cynically manipulate and exploit” the misery of people suffering “a sense of deprivation,” agitators who “organize and encourage hatred for their political ends” (Hatred: The Psychological Dissent into Violence, Public Affairs, 2003, pp. 215-15, 239-40, 246-7).
Rage over a deep sense of loss can be turned inward when a people no longer recognize one another as such, when they cannot empathize across differences and divisions, do not identify with the Other, and choose to render diversities in dehumanizing and demonizing terms to the point of losing sight of a shared humanity.
Domestic rage is akin to rage in international relations when the image of the enemy within reflects the projected image of the foreign enemy as the savage, the barbarian, the cause of trouble. The ancient Greeks protected their own polities from civil war by dedicating temples and altars to the Furies, which meant rage in hard times was redirected toward foreign enemies. Outsiders took on the bestial form that placed them beyond empathy. Yet, what may have preserved civility and contained rage in the ancient city-state does not hold in a disparate republic of over 300 million, where insiders are more easily marked as outsiders. As Rupert Brodersen suggests, resentment of the estranged Other produces rage without moral restraint or regard—indeed, a sense of moral imperative in an aggressor’s pursuit of justice, which can “plunge entire communities into chaos” when the target of rage is viewed as “undeserving of moral consideration” (Emotional Motives in International Relations: Rage, Rancour and Revenge, Routledge, 2018, pp. 4-7, 37-40). A baseless internet rumor that Haitian immigrants “are eating the dogs … eating the cats … eating the pets” of Springfield, Ohio residents, repeated by Donald Trump in a presidential debate witnessed by 67 million viewers, was an unprompted lie, observed Politifact, that reinforced negative stereotypes and incited dozens of bomb threats, “stigmatizing the town and its residents in the name of campaign rage.”
Where does that leave us?
On the one hand, the present rage promotes authoritarian oligarchy over democracy. On the other, it signals democracy’s failure. We are more accustomed to fighting wars in the name of defending democracy than to enriching democratic culture. Rage is attuned to the culture of war, a culture that permeates and informs daily life in the U.S. and diminishes civic life. Trump’s first administration was a dire warning and a clear and present danger—a bleak reminder of what we have been before and should not become again—but a danger that mattered too little to too many people this past November. If there is a lesson to draw from the outcome of the 2024 general election, short of giving up on politics, it is the need to cultivate a thicker, stronger democratic character. The country’s thin veneer of democracy has not held up well to the surge of tyranny’s rage, a rage that has intensified. Whether we can deepen the sources of authentic democratic citizenship in the face of four more years of a Trump presidency remains an open question.
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Support for Luigi Mangione Reflects Working Class Weariness of Top-Down Violence
To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized.
Dec 28, 2024
Early this month Luigi Mangione, 26, University of Pennsylvania graduate, allegedly gunned down CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, 50. The public response has been varied, with many supporting Mangione. Some fear the positive regard of Mangione is indicative of a shift into a new era where violence is glorified and humanity is lost. As a sociology professor who teaches Poverty, Wealth, and Privilege, I disagree. This failure of subsets of the public to broadly denounce the actions of Mangione does not herald a cultural shift in appreciation of violence.
Instead this unusual display of class consciousness reflects two things. First, the reaction is due to the shift in who bore the cost of violence. Class under-resourced; Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color; women; and queer and trans people are the normal recipients of societal violence. Wealthy, cishet, white men in positions of power are not. Wealthy, white communities are conditioned to expect protection, and the revocation of that sheltering is rare.
Second, the working classes are weary from surviving an unnecessarily violent and unjust society. We live amid staggering class, race, and gender-based stratification and life and death stakes everyday. The ruling class profits from our blood, sweat, and tears. And yet, when one of the elite passes, they want us to give them more. They ask us to give them our love. Yet, they remain calloused to our pain and ignore our pleas for fairness.
We, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth?
We all deserve the same sanctity of life given to wealthy insiders. However, when it comes to many of our social systems, such as healthcare, respect and care are not institutionalized; instead, harm is normalized. We see “out-sized returns” to private equity investors.
Recently, a magician performed at a kid’s birthday party. Magic tricks work through deception. A magician distracts the audience to hide what else they are doing. Similar dynamics play out in our public life. The wealth gap continues to grow, yet we voted in a billionaire to be president. The public is shamed for failing to appropriately sympathize with Brian Thompson and his family, yet everyday targeted attacks and systemic neglect accumulate to harm and render disposable historically and strategically marginalized communities, such as class under-resourced, BIPOC, women, and trans and queer people.
Let us stop this charade. Our healthcare system is not pro-health. The World Health Organization (WHO) names universal healthcare as a worldwide goal. The United States has not complied. Most Americans are insured through private companies. Many Americans struggle to pay for healthcare, they postpone receiving care, and are in medical debt. The healthcare system has practices, such as using AI to deny a high number of healthcare claims, which put profits over people. There is something deeply inhumane and harmful about this disregard for health in a healthcare system. It may not be illegal, but it is savage.
The elite and their apologists ask, “How could they not be appalled by Thompson’s murder?” Instead we, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth? Decades ago, Larry Summers, currently on the board of directors of OpenAI, famously wrote that people who produce less are more expendable. This classist ideology pervades our healthcare system.
To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized. A path forward that reforms a calloused healthcare system can provide benefits to all of us. Those among us who deeply mourn Brian’s death can take solace that it can impart a legacy of positive, sustainable, and overdue social change. Those among us who view Mangione’s action as predictable, if not understandable, can appreciate the same reform.
To be sure, there are people who claim that human fallibility is a predestined curse that we cannot overcome, that we are born sinners and that we cannot do better than prioritize greed over care of each other, even within our healthcare system. There will be those of us who feel that disproportionate wealth is a triumph and that our healthcare should reflect the position we hold in our socioeconomic system. However, 73 countries have universal healthcare, including China, Russia, Mexico and Canada. Us Americans are also worthy.
Wealthy and powerful people are the most protected against societal harms, and they also have disproportionate control over them. We need the CEOs, billionaires, and other power elites to do better. The system does not have a great way to hold those in charge accountable for bad behavior. Can they figure out a way to hold themselves accountable? Can they reorganize to prioritize care, a virtue, over greed, a vice, in our healthcare system? If they are immune to this self-correcting recovery, we need to organize around collective action, such as voting, for example for single-payer healthcare, because our lives depend on it. We don’t want anyone dying in the street. We also don’t want anyone dying or in pain due to a broken so-called healthcare system.
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Luigi Mangione Charged With Murder as 'An Act of Terrorism' for Killing of Insurance CEO
The "maximum penalty possible for murder in first degree and murder in the second degree as an act of terrorism is life without parole," said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Dec 17, 2024
Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspect arrested last week in connection to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was indicted on charges including murder in the first degree in furtherance of terrorism and murder in the second degree as an act of terrorism, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced Tuesday.
Thompson was gunned down outside of a Midtown Manhattan hotel on December 4, prompting a dayslong manhunt to find the shooter. The case also triggered a wave of dark humor and vitriol directed at the for-profit healthcare industry.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office previously filed paperwork charging Mangione, an Ivy League graduate and Maryland native, with murder, but the terror allegation is new, according to The Associated Press.
A day after Luigi Mangione was arrested and first charged, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein published what he said was Mangione's manifesto, which read in part: "I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming."
In addition, Mangione has been charged with a second count of murder in the second degree, "pertaining to the fact that the killing was intentional," said District Attorney Alvin Bragg during a press conference on Tuesday.
All told, Mangione is facing an 11-count indictment, which also include two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, and four counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. He has also been charged with Pennsylvania gun and forgery offenses and is currently being held in a Pennsylvania jail.
Bragg called Thompson's killing "brazen, targeted, and premeditated shooting" and said the terrorism charges were warranted because the slaying was "intended to evoke terror."
Bragg noted that the "maximum penalty possible for murder in first degree and murder in the second degree as an act of terrorism is life without parole. The maximum penalty for murder in second degree is 25 years to life."
Mangione recently hired Manhattan attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo to represent him.
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