Luigi Mangione & American System Meltdown

I read the book review written by Luigi Mangione on the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, which he gave 4 stars, and appeared to admire Kaczynski’s analysis of modern Western society. The manifesto is called the Industrial Society and Its Future, and Mangione quotes a Reddit post that talked about the book, or anyway about Kaczynski, which says, among other things: Peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere…When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution… Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn’t possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense?…He says: We’re animals just like everything else on this planet, except we’ve forgotten the law of the jungle and bend over for our overlords when any other animal would recognize the threat and fight to the death for their survival. “Violence never solved anything” is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.”

Now, again, this is Mangione quoting someone else, but he is quoting it because he agrees with it. There’s a lot to dissect there. A lot of conclusions that drive the opinions are themselves opinions, I mean, the conclusions are themselves opinions; such as the conclusion that peaceful protests have gotten us nowhere, that then leads to the opinion that violence is necessary. The conclusion or assumption that all other forms of peaceful communication have failed — that’s an opinion. Peaceful protest is ignored, and economic protest is not possible — ok, these are opinions, and I would suspect that they are actually afterthoughts being used as justifications for violence, rather than violence being something that has been determined necessary after thorough reflection. Because look, powerlessness is very seldom an actual state that exists, it is a mindset, a defeated mindset, a mentality that perceives the enemy as overpowering and almost omnipotent. This is a mental state, powerlessness, helplessness, is a psychological condition, not a real world condition in most cases.

Because look at Mangione himself. He is a rich kid, valedictorian, from a big influential wealthy family. He is from the elite class. Of course he isn’t powerless or helpless. Kaczynksi was from the same class. Mathematical prodigy, genius, what have you. Ivy League and whatnot. These are not working class, struggling people.

Like, violence is the resort of those who have no other resort, generally. So, I would not actually expect to see a rich kid from a rich family , who has all sorts of resources at his disposal, to resort to gunning someone down in the street as if he was someone with no resources and no options. He, by nature of his wealth, education, family, and so on, had options. The killer and the killed are both men from the same class and economic strata. I think that is interesting.

This is being received as vengeance for the working class, but the only working class player in this drama has been the McDonalds employee who called the cops; because a $10,000 reward promises to solve a lot of problems for anyone living paycheck to paycheck.

So, I think it is fascinating. There are theories going around that Mangione had back problems or that his mother had chronic health issues, and that therefore, this was a personal grievance for him. But again: he is rich. No one in his family is going to die because they can’t afford treatment or care. I mean, who knows, that McDonalds worker who snitched on him might have needed that 10K to pay for their own medical bills! But no one in the Mangione family is going to go without healthcare.

On one hand, this incident has the potential to help redirect public attention towards more appropriate targets of opposition. I have literally been saying for decades now that the proper focus of activism, opposition, and resistance, should be the corporate sector. And indeed, this action that was allegedly committed by Mangione, has been largely received by the working class in America as justified — which should terrify the ruling class.

And this is one of the most interesting aspects of this. Because I do not personally believe that peaceful protests, economic protests, and non-violent means of communication and engagement with power, are useless or ignored. I think that the idea that these efforts are futile is propagated precisely because power does NOT want people to engage in them, because they ARE useful, or can be useful and effective. They want you to feel powerless and helpless and to become radicalized so you commit actions that will put you in prison. In my opinion, the views expressed by Mangione and the Reddit post he quoted, actually reflect complete intellectual subjugation to power; because it is based on a perception that absolutely nothing can be done. A perception that the power structure is completely impervious and invulnerable and cannot be moved in any positive way whatsoever.

Well, ok, you transferred power from the public sector to the private sector. You made the private sector immune from public accountability, from any sort of so-called democratic mechanisms; and it is precisely because your so-called democracy only applies to government and not to the private sector, that you moved all power away from government and gave it all to business — precisely because you did not want to be democratic in the management of your society. So, now you do have tyrannical power in your country. You have dictatorship in your country. You are ruled by autocratic oligarchs and corporations. And yes, you do need to do something about that. You do need to resist and oppose that.

Because look, United Health Care, HMOs, insurance companies and so on — these are among the most powerful industry lobbies and campaign contributors in America — but these companies only even exist, and only have the power to oppress and harm you because you don’t have socialized healthcare. And you don’t have socialized healthcare because those companies that have commodified public health and who profit from your sickness and death, have captured your government — along with the rest of the private sector. Your government is completely owned. I do not personally see that whacking a CEO of a health insurance company is going to lead to socialized medicine in the United States.

I think there are any number of more effective and more productive efforts could be made in this regard; but that is exactly what I am talking about — you have been indoctrinated, apparently even at the highest levels of academia — to believe that nothing can be done. That’s why Mangione’s class status is significant. Because, as I said, in theory, his privileged position in the society puts him within the power structure, but he took the action of someone who is outside the power structure, beneath the power structure. Which means that even he has been made to believe that the power structure is invincible.

And he is not the only one. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that we saw the sons and daughters of the elite protesting on Ivy League campuses over Gaza? The upcoming generation of the ruling class are rebelling against the power they are on track to inherit. But they have not figured out any ways to reform the system. This is a very serious problem for America.

The fact is, people turn to violence when non-violent methods require too much effort, patience, time, and energy. That is the case most of the time. In a country like the US, and in many others, it comes down to their money and our masses. In other words, the only equalizer in terms of power between us and the elites is collective action, organizing, solidarity, and patient, disciplined, focused, persistence. And that takes a great deal of effort. And most people don’t have that kind of time or energy. So, someone like Mangione, theoretically, had resources, had time, had energy, and could have pursued organizing, could have funded organising, he would have had the tools available to him to do that. But instead, he did what he did. Allegedly.

He killed a ceo who will be immediately replaced. Now, maybe, his hope — again, if he is in fact the culprit — he might have hoped that his action would ignite a countrywide movement, a revolution against corporate domination. Maybe. But we can probably put his action in the same category as what Ted Kaczynski did, and even what Timothy McVeigh did. McVeigh believed that blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma would start a revolution. To one extent or another, Kaczynski also thought that his bombing campaign would start a movement that would cause the collapse of the power structure. None of these actions led to copycats. Compare that with the mother of all school shootings at columbine high school in Colorado, there have been literally thousands of copycat crimes since then. Over 600 school shootings so far this year. So, are we actually going to see an avalanche of CEOs getting whacked? Not very likely.

Because you don’t actually get to outsource the heavy lifting when it comes to grassroots popular movements you know? You don’t get to just be the guy who does some dramatic action that then inspires a mass movement to emerge fully formed because of your heroism, martyrdom, or what have you. That’s why probably you have school shooter copycats but not copycats of so-called revolutionary violence, generally. Because ultimately, both are just acts of extreme rage, despair, hopelessness, frustration, and an inability to address grievances with any sort of wisdom or maturity. Well, none of this can inspire a movement.

This is a very American, a very Western approach to problem-solving: violence. You know? Eat the rich. When that CEO got killed, the next scene in the movie is supposed to be all the peasants marching out with their torches and pitchforks to storm the penthouses and gated communities. Set up the guillotines and start eliminating all the corrupt, greedy, super-rich by the dozens. That’s the movie script, but it’s not the real world. And you have completely disabled your own people’s ability to know how to address problems in the real world — even the children of your elites.

Because Mangione is basically the tiktok generation, the social media generation. He is from the generation of young people who barely consume mainstream media. Which means, he has grown up on a less controlled narrative, and been exposed to perspectives of people outside his class strata, and perspectives about his class strata. Meaning, people subject to the power structure he is a part of. So, he is exposed to the experiences and views and attitudes and opinions of people he is not supposed to be exposed to; while also growing up within the power structure. OK, that is an infiltration. That amounts to an infiltration. Because you can no longer control the narratives that the children of the elite consume, you can no longer ensure that they will have been successfully educated and indoctrinated to carry on with the preservation of your system. That is a very serious problem.

And then, you see from the quote Mangione used in his review of the Kaczynski book, how much more serious your problem is. Your obscene Darwinian narrative about humanity. That we are all just animals, fundamentally and naturally guided by the law of the jungle. You have predation and victimization and violence embedded in your whole so-called civilization. It is carved into your cultural DNA the same way Mangione carved into his shell casings the words Defend Deny and Depose. And you have created a power structure, a system of control, that is undemocratic, that is authoritarian, and that is supposed to be self-reinforcing; but the campus Gaza protests and the CEO killing makes it look like you can’t count on it being self-reinforcing anymore. Because the next generation is estranged.

So, you have an oppressive system that has made everyone believe it cannot be held accountable, cannot be changed, cannot be modified, is completely contemptuous of the population, and completely rejects any externally demanded discipline or ethical reform; a system that has very deliberately made people feel powerless to change — even the people within the system, within the power structure, even they have been made to feel that the power structure is unchangeable and it is impossible to hold it to account. And you have all of that in a society where you believe that human beings are adversarial beasts in a zero-sum contest for survival and dominance, well, how do you think that is going to play out?

See, you did what you did because you have this mentality, this predator-prey mentality. You don’t have democratic instincts. You don’t believe for a second that the people are supposed to hold power accountable. You only ever said that because you know you come from a so-called civilization that abuses power as a function OF power, so you have deep paranoia and suspicions about those in power, because you know how you are. You know that you can never resist abusing power, because fundamentally, you believe in the law of the jungle. So, you came up with this democratic theory, this artificial model of public accountability for the government — and then almost immediately shifted real power away FROM government and transferred it to the undemocratic private sector, because again, you can’t help yourselves. Once any of you have power, you reject accountability. So yes, you moved power into the private sector and declared that business must be untouchable, business should be free to operate however it likes, and the so-called invisible hand of the market can wrap its grip around the throat of the government.

Well, you created this dynamic, this law of the jungle, dog eat dog, winner takes all dynamic in your society. The one at the top of the hill won’t let anybody else up, so you have it designed so that the only way for anyone else to be on the top of the hill is to knock the other guy down.

Do you understand me? Because you have insisted on the unaccountability of power in your so-called democratic society, you have literally barred any civilized approach to redress of grievances, you have told your society that power will never bend, so the only thing that can be done is to break it.

Like I said, I do not believe that peaceful protest or economic protest or non-violent methods are ineffective or useless; but you have actually deliberately convinced people of that, as part and parcel of trying to make sure the power structure can be unaccountable; because you know that you have to deny the effectiveness of what is effective, you never want people to think they have viable options of resistance and change — because the fact is, almost every successful social movement in America that has improved people’s lives has BEEN achieved by non-violent methods, by diligent long term strategies and so on. So, no, you don’t want people to believe that what works, works. Because you have an uncivilized predatory mentality, because your power structure is tyrannical, you need everyone to feel overpowered and helpless. But when you have such an adversarial relationship with your own people, and at the same time, have implanted the Darwinian concept of human animals into their heads, eventually, with no other options being regarded as plausible, you make violence inevitable. It is not inevitable because it has to be, it’s not inevitable because there are not other options in reality; but because you have insisted to make people believe there are no other options; and you have done that because you would rather turn your society into a bloody conflict zone than accept changing or accept power being held accountable. You would rather there be a violent confrontation between power and the people, because you feel certain you will win that confrontation, or else that the people will back down when faced with all the violent power at your disposal. Because, again, you are just like that: adversarial, predatory, animalistic; and you think any time power is challenged or even asked to behave with a modicum of human decency; it is a threat that has to be crushed.

Oh it’s a bloodthirsty system, that so-called health care system you have is the most bloodthirsty of them all. Literally the most inhumane, anti-human, psychopathic, systematic death machine imaginable. A system that is supposed to be about saving lives, that deliberately, knowingly, and cold-heartedly just lets people die. That’s the American healthcare system.

And as long as the lower classes are the only ones who are outraged by this reality, well, that’s fine. But now you have your own elite class outraged about it to the point of violence. This is a total system meltdown in America.

I told you that there were going to be all sorts of terrorist attacks in the West, in America, in Europe; all sorts of violence, because your societies are breaking down. There is going to be political violence, there’s going to be racial violence, there’s going to be class violence, and there’s going to be random criminal violence; because you can’t create conditions of desperation in your society, and not expect people to do desperate things.

Luigi Mangione is from that demographic that is supposed to be invested in the system, he is from that class that is supposed to protect the system, because they benefit from it; but you are losing control of even the stakeholders in your own power structure! Why, I don’t think you can even comprehend how dangerous that is! Because Luigi Mangione is also from that demographic and from that class in your society that was raised to feel entitled to take matters into their own hands. Furthermore, he is from that class and demographic in your society that, as I said, is part of the power structure, which means he comes from the most ruthless, most calculating, and the most capable demographic in America for efficient and targeted violence. That is the class he comes from, he has the qualities of that class, the predatory class; the dominating class; and he is just one of many from that class, who are turning on their own.