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luigi mangione
'All You Had to Do Was Pay Us Enough to Live,' Said Alleged California Warehouse Arsonist
"Expect to see more of this as people struggle to survive under our decaying capitalist system," warned one observer.
Apr 11, 2026
The 29-year-old employee accused of burning down a paper products warehouse in southern California was allegedly furious over pay and working conditions at the facility and compared himself Luigi Mangione, the anti-capitalist folk hero to many Americans who allegedly assassinated a health insurance CEO.
Chamel Abdulkarim is facing federal and state felony charges in connection with a blaze that tore through the 1.2 million square-foot Kimberly-Clark warehouse in Ontario, San Bernardino County, shortly after 12:30 am on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Times reported that 20 other people were working in the facility, which is roughly the size of 11 city blocks, at the time. There are no reports of any injuries.
According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), Abdulkarim uploaded videos to Facebook showing him setting fires in the warehouse and saying, “If you’re not going to pay us enough to fucking live or afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this shit."
Abdulkarim allegedly said in texts and phone calls that he cost Kimberly-Clark "billions," adding, "All you had to do was pay us enough to live."
"All you had to do was pay us enough to live".On April 7, 2026, a 29-year-old worker named Chamel Abdulkarim was arrested on arson-related charges after a massive, six-alarm fire destroyed a 1.2-million-square-foot Kimberly-Clark warehouse in Ontario, California.
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— Raider (@iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social) April 8, 2026 at 6:33 PM
The DOJ said the blaze caused "approximately $500 million in damage."
Prosecutors said that after starting the fires, Abdulkarim called a friend and said that “a lot of people are going to understand” what he did, just like when “Luigi popped that mutherfucker,” a reference to Mangione's alleged murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York in 2024.
Shareholders of Kimberly-Clark—which makes products including Kleenex tissues, Scott and Cottonelle toilet paper, Huggies diapers, and Kotex feminine care products—enjoyed profits topping $2.0 billion last year. Company chairman and CEO Michael Hsu made about $15.3 in compensation. That's more than 300 times as much as the average Kimberly-Clark employee earned, according to the AFL-CIO.
Critics of capitalism have long argued that the yawning chasm between rich and poor in the United States is a recipe for disaster that could far exceed individual acts of resistance, if the crisis is not soon addressed. However, under President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, wealth inequality continues to increase at what many experts argue is an unsustainable rate.
Many leftists took to social media to praise the blaze, with some, like the Rev. Oliver Dean Snow of Mothman Ministries, comparing the arson attack to historical acts of radical resistance like the 1884 New Straitsville Mine Fire, in which striking union miners in Ohio pushed burning coal cars deep into a mine, causing an underground inferno that not only permanently shut down operations, but is believed to still be burning to this day, 141 years later.
Idk why Chamel Abdulkarim isn’t being hailed the same way Luigi Mangione was. Especially by Appalachians. Bro did something based and literally hurt NO ONE. Only thing that got hurt was same toilet paper. Some of yalls ancestors would be ashamed of you.ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org/archives/216
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— Preacher from the Black Lagoon (@revpoppop.bsky.social) April 10, 2026 at 12:46 PM
"Expect to see more of this as people struggle to survive under our decaying capitalist system," said one popular socialist account on X.
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NY State Judge Throws Out Terrorism Charges Against Luigi Mangione
"While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care industry generally," said the judge, "it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population.'"
Sep 16, 2025
A judge in New York City on Tuesday threw out a pair of charges against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December of last year while he walked down a street in Manhattan.
Judge Gregory Carro did not throw out the entirety of the murder charges against Mangione, but said two of the most serious charges—murder in the first degree as a crime of terrorism and a second-degree charge related to terrorism—were not proven by the prosecution's case presented to a grand jury.
The judge indicated that just because Mangione may have been motivated by ideological opposition to the for-profit industry, that does not de facto make it terrorism under New York statute.
"While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care industry generally, it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population,’ and indeed, there was no evidence presented of such a goal,” Carro wrote in his decision.
In addition to state charges in New York, Mangione is also facing a federal murder case over the killing of Thompson, with the federal prosecutors seeking the death penalty. The accused has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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'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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