Shocking to many, the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione, has acquired a devoted fan base.
“The seething anger underneath showed that Luigi, at least for a certain part of the population, has enormous support,” said a former Trump White House strategist. Steve Bannon said. “When you get to that point, it should be flashing red that we have a problem.”
A problem perhaps, but certainly not new.
Coincidentally, Mangione is the beneficiary of a very American tradition. Cheering for murderous bandits is as American a tradition as apple pie. Ironically, for the Steve Bannons who want to make America great again, popular support for Mangione represents a return to form, a reincarnation of a time when Americans regularly romanticized violent murderers.
The United States is a complicated, capricious oddity, as tolerant of acts of incredible violence as it is capable of unprecedented acts of benevolence. It is a historical marvel: a land inhabited and tamed by religious fanatics, bandits, orphans, fortune seekers, bastards and refugees, each seeking self-determination. With such a motley collection of founding members, America’s DNA is equal parts criminal, evangelist, beggar, and conqueror. Rather than any one of these characteristics emerging as supreme, they have been intermingled over the centuries, making it possible for the public to take such contradictory positions as: Crime is bad, although some crime is good.
The truth is that America is a messy, violent country full of messy, violent people, many of whom will tolerate and even cheer on deadly bandits, as long as the violence is against a perceived greater evil. It is this tendency that has turned so many killers into folk heroes, including those who emerged suddenly during the Great Depression.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, popularly known as “Bonnie and Clyde,” enjoyed popular support during their murderous multi-state crime spree. They were seen by many as “romantic Robin Hoodswhose sins could be overlooked because they allegedly attacked greedy bankers. (The romanticized version of the duo was also popularized by a news media eager to sensationalize the story for the benefit of a depression-weary public.) Never mind that Bonnie and Clyde were not anti-bank crusaders, but rather maladjusted sociopaths who mainly focused on the backroads. shops, supermarkets and petrol stations.
By the time they were shot in 1934, the two had murdered thirteen people. Still, the couple’s funeral attracted more than 10,000 spectators. Mere idle curiosity cannot explain a crowd of this size.
Even today, opinions about the duo are divided in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, where Bonnie and Clyde were killed in a police ambush. In the Bienville parish magazinewrote author Brad Dison last year when he asked locals about the celebrity criminals, these are the most common reactions:
“They weren’t as bad as people said they were.”
“They didn’t do everything the newspapers said they did.”
“They were good people.”
“They got what they deserved.”
“They were nothing but white trash.”
“They didn’t care about anyone but themselves.”
There’s more.
John Dillinger, whose gang killed 10 people and injured seven others, was also seen as a bailiff who targeted banks. His fame and popular support grew to such an extent that in 1934, when theater newsreels discussed his criminal exploits, “audiences across America cheered when Dillinger’s picture appeared on the screen” and “hissed at pictures” from agents of the Division of Investigation (the DOI was a precursor to the FBI).
Almost 10,000 people lined up to view his body before he was buried.
Charles Arthur Floyd, best known as ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’, certainly killed at least two people and may have been involved in at least four additional murders. Yet in his day he was seen as a “Robin Hood figure, beloved by America’s dispossessed and downtrodden by the Great Depression” because he targeted banks, the newspaper said. Oklahoma Historical Society.
One newspaper even called him the ‘Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills’.
“During his crimes,” reports the Carnegie Public Library, “he was so well thought of by the community that he was able to walk freely in public and even attended church in Earlsboro.”
Pinko proto-hippie Woody Guthrie tried to immortalize Floyd in song, repeating the myth that the trigger-happy thief would rip up mortgages during his bank robberies.
The song goes:
Then he went to the trees and the wood
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.
But many are hungry farmers
Same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little houses.
Etc., etc..
Floyd was shot and killed by law enforcement officers in 1934. More than 20,000 people attended his funeral.
Even further back, before the Great Depression, the public’s weakness for outlaws is reflected in its support for real-life criminals like Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Both were applauded for supposedly fighting for the poor against the rich and the greedy. It doesn’t matter approximately how many deaths there are 10 And threerespectively.
We don’t even need to go into the details of the messier, modern examples of Bernie Goetz, who shot four black men he claimed were trying to rob him during the New York City crime epidemic of the 1980s, and Gary Plauché, who executed him. his son’s rapist, to drive home the point, which is this: a significant number of Americans will tolerate and even support outlaw violence as long as the perpetrator is perceived to be the target of a grave evil.
Plauché did not serve any time in prison. Goetz was convicted only of criminal possession of a gun and served less than a year in prison.
With this long-standing contrarian affection for bandits, it’s no surprise that Mangione has a devoted following. He fights against ‘the man’ – in this case against private health insurers. While Mangione’s popularity is undoubtedly tasteless and ignorant, it is by no means unique or unprecedented. America is not drifting into dark, uncharted waters. Americans are merely responding in their usual ways.
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But don’t despair that your neighbor Luigi Mangione might be celebrating. It amazes me that a country with such tolerance for violence and lawlessness could even exist. Furthermore, wonder that such a country could also be capable of historic acts of generosity, such as the Marshall Plan.
America is a wild, messy, wonderful place, home to CEO killers and G-men alike.