PARTISAN!

Luigi Mangione (may or may not have) shot United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4th, and far from changing the world or sparking the revolution as some may believe, nothing happened. Marxists have long repudiated individual terror as a tactic of revolution (although, Mangione is not a communist, anarchist, leftist etc, despite people projecting these politics onto him), or at least should be, so it comes as a surprise that in the aftermath of Mangione’s nihilistic and mindless attack on the system, people claiming to be communists and Marxists not only support what Mangione did, but also encourage copy-cat shooters.

I did not care that Thompson was shot dead. The private healthcare industry in the US (and everywhere, really) is the vanguard of social murder, and many have made their stories and interactions with this system public (about the only ‘positive’ thing to come from this shooting). However, this shooting represents political trends that many people are ignoring, condoning, or outright supporting.

That this shooting was done by a ‘random guy’ and not by a politically committed terrorist is indicative of one thing: that ‘random guys’ are slowly finding their way toward individual terrorism even if they lack the political background. Unlike the average individual terrorist in the US, Mangione was not some basement dwelling incel (‘involuntarily celibate’, misogynist internet subculture) or avowed neo-Nazi (though some of his alleged political inspirations raise eyebrows). Secondly, this shooting indicates a startling trend in the post-Bernie, post-2016 U.S Left – a trend toward nihilistic violence and terrorism, once relegated to edgy guillotine memes on Twitter. Even long-time activist Tom Tanuki has joined in on the “shoot CEOs” bandwagon that the terminally online Left has found itself chugging along to.

Instead of engaging politically, whether they can or are ‘barred’ from doing so (perceived or otherwise), these people turn to random acts of violence (a similar tendency could be seen with Aaron Bushnell and others – instead of directing their violence against specific targets, they directed it against themselves in frivolous acts of suicidal moralism). Justified with ultra-left verbiage, these people wreck and sabotage the movement to build a militant workers party by encouraging workers to throw their lives away for the cheap catharsis that comes from killing someone you don’t like. Worst of all, the majority of these people are full of hot air, more or less: their advocacy for and encouragement of terrorism begins at the keyboard and ends at the enter key. For all the talk of “class war”, “class consciousness”, and the “necessity” of killing billionaires, none of these people follow through on their ill-advised threats (for the better).

I’m far from a fan of CEOs, but rather controversially, I believe that murdering CEOs and billionaires will not end the capitalist system. It is nihilistic catharsis seeking from people who have ‘given up’ on real politics. As Martin Greenfield wrote for the Weekly Worker: “The working class has no interest in private health schemes, but in a completely socialised health system that removes private insurance altogether. This will not be achieved by the murder of insurance executives. It would be concerning for the ‘progressive’ movements – either environmental or anti-capitalist – to see these individual acts as a path forward. While they might grab momentary sympathy and be seen as some sort of ‘Robin Hood moment’, they are in fact dangerous and reactionary dead-ends for the workers’ movement.” (WW1519)

Leftists of all stripes will, I don’t doubt, continue to valorize and defend Luigi Mangione, completely detached from the more or less apathetic shrugging of the working class. One does not have to look far to find a leftist drooling over how “hot” Luigi looks, worshipping him as a saint, turning the shooting into merchandise (this entire site is deeply perverse), or making infographics about how his perp walk made him look “cool”. Frothing over how attractive Mangione is and putting his face on underwear misses the point of what he did completely – if we take him at his word (or by his deed), the point was to lash out against a murderous institution of capital, not to show everyone his chiselled jawline.

As Martin pointed out for the WW, even Jordan van den Lamb (aka ‘purplepingers‘ of Tiktok fame), has fallen into the trap of lefty meme subculture, especially with regards to Mangione. While van den Lamb can assert til he’s blue in the face that he’s against individual terror and for collective action (as he does in a relatively bleak 14-minute video uploaded to Twitter/X), posting memes about Mangione which softens people to him and his act, while not outright opposing this act of individual terror (which Trotsky, cited in van den Lamb’s video, does), easily gives one the impression, whether intended or otherwise, that van den Lamb has little to no issue with such acts.

In a Tweet made shortly after the shooting, he also states that “system you’re [the original poster to which he is responding] speaking about here is enabled by powerful people with names and addresses”. What is the implication of this statement meant to be, paired with a supportive attitude toward Mangione, except that the system can be disabled by shooting said powerful people with names and addresses? An earlier tweet, in which he states that “I feel like sometimes people like this [millionaires, CEOs, etc] forget they have names and addresses”, does not do him any favors.

One does not need to look very hard to find instances of van den Lamb posting memes supportive of or covering for Mangione (such as here), which makes it hard to believe him when he states that he is ‘against’ individual terror: either he is being a hypocrite (he is saying one thing but doing another), or he is too immersed in lefty meme subculture to understand that terrorism isn’t a joke to be shared around on social media profiles with your face and name attached.

Jordan should use his head and think about the things he posts, not only because he is a public figure identified with socialist politics, but also because he is a candidate for the Victorian Socialists. If I can put all of this into a letter without much effort and criticize him for it, professional newsrooms will tear him open if they ever thought to do so. By conducting himself in a frankly undisciplined way, he is opening himself, the Victorian Socialists, the socialist movement, and the workers movement up to cheap attacks from the bourgeois press, which is easy to do when van den Lamb provides a non-stop supply of figurative weaponry to attack him with.

We should expect better political discipline from our electoral candidates, especially when it comes to events such as the CEO shooting (and potential future ones). I won’t say that Jordan is totally useless, or that his purplepingers project has no value. It has certainly spread useful information about renters rights, squatters rights, the housing crisis, etc. However, this does not make him a suitable candidate for the Victorian Socialists (on its own). Thus it is still confusing how van den Lamb managed to be selected for the spot in the first place.

We should be organising workers, not telling them to shoot people they don’t like. We can have one or the other. At the risk of exonerating Platypus, if the best the Left can provide the working class is tiktok after tiktok about how Luigi Mangione looks like a model and should be made a saint (are we catholics, or communists?), then we can safely say that Mangione’s shooting well and truly proves the death of the Left.

Max J, Newcastle

[Also see: LETTER: Deny, Defend, Depose? Healthcare, Assassinations, and Workers’ Power]