Dead End: Luigi Mangione & the Killing of Brian Thompson in Context
On July 23, 1892, Alexander Berkman shot Henry Clay Frick two times. Berkman was an anarchist and compatriot of Emma Goldman. Frick was a Pittsburgh steel man, a partner of Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, and a Robber Baron. Berkman tried to assassinate Frick because Frick was aggressively anti-union and had just overseen a deadly attack by Pinkerton security goons on striking workers at Frick’s Homestead steel plant. The workers were striking to prevent a wage cut. Frick was intent on crushing all union activity. Berkman wanted Frick dead.
Alexander Berkman was an early adopter of what mid-1800s insurrectionists called propaganda of the deed. First theorized by an Italian socialist, propaganda of the deed was given the big push by anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and nihilist Sergey Nechayev, and popularized in the United States by the German anarchist Johann Most, whose writings inspired Berkman.
The insurrectionists believed that to inspire the workers to rise up, they must show the way through violent actions, rather than education and ideas. “If we pop a few capitalists and blow up some politicians, our working-class comrades will take a hint,” was their reasoning.
Berkman’s attempted assassination of Frick was an early example of propaganda of the deed. Over the next 25-years, insurrectionists committed themselves to assassinations, shootings, and bombings. They targeted industrialists, prime ministers, kings, bankers, judges, tsars, and politicians. Insurrectionists bombed the French National Assembly and assassinated US President William McKinley. The insurrectionists’ immediate justification for the violence was that the targets were active enemies of the working-class, oppressors and parasites who deserved their fates. The ultimate goal, though, was revolution, one inspired by propaganda by the deed.
Propaganda by the deed was a spectacular failure. Rather than inspiring the working-class to rise up and free themselves, the insurrectionists goaded the ruling-class to smash all attempts at organizing and whomever they considered “bad guys,” which was anyone who expressed an interest in change. In the United States, Pinkertons were sent to break up strikes, start riots, and eliminate instigators. Thousands of workers were rounded up and jailed. Many were beaten and murdered. The US government not only helped break strikes, it actively pursued immigrants - “the enemy within” – for deportation.
In Berkman’s case, Henry Frick survived, returning to work just a week after the attempt on his life. Berkman was arrested at the scene and spent the next 14 years in prison. Two years after his release, Berkman and Goldman were deported to Russia. The Homestead Strike was defeated by Frick and Carnegie, a setback which nearly snuffed the labor movement in its crib. It would take a decade for the movement to recover, and more for it to become a force.
European insurrectionists fared no better than the Americans. Even the Russians, who pulled off a successful revolution, found little benefit in propaganda by the deed. Still, throughout the 20th Century, the strategy continued under new names such as “illegalism” and “urban struggle.”
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a left-wing fringe engaged in urban struggle (terrorism, to the establishment). In West Germany, there was the Red Army Faction; in Italy, the Red Brigade. There was the Japanese Red Army and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In the United Kingdom, the Angry Brigade caused chaos. In the United States, the Weather Underground did similar.
The goals of each of these groups was the same: Inflict harm on the ruling-class and inspire the masses to rise up. None of these groups were successful. All suffered from violent retaliation, incarceration, and murder.
On December 4, 2024, Luigi Mangione allegedly shot Brian Thompson. Mangione is a 26-year-old man from a wealthy family, with no identified political beliefs. Thompson was a 50-year-old CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance company which, under Thompson’s leadership, maximized profits by aggressively denying medical claims by its paying customers. Recently, Thompson had UnitedHealthcare adopt AI to streamline and increase claim denials. Bullet casings from the shooting scene had the words "delay", "deny", and "depose" inscribed on them, words used in the health insurance industry to challenge and deny medical claims.
As soon as the delay/deny/depose inscriptions hit the internet, the Thompson murder went from an obscure but mysterious shooting in Manhattan to “the first shot in the class war.” Internet revolutionists rushed to ally themselves with an assassin that they knew nothing about. Once the alleged shooter was caught and identified, keyboard warriors quickly posted things like “I am Luigi Mangione,” once again knowing little to nothing about the suspect or his motives, beyond three words on some bullet casings. And through all the digital bravado, the words “class war” continues to be chanted.
What makes Luigi Mangione’s alleged act different from Berkman, the dozens of other turn-of-the-century adopters of propaganda of the deed, and the late-20th Century urban-guerillas is that Mangione, allegedly, is a lone wolf. Berkman was part of a growing movement of anarchists, socialists, and labor unionists. He had compatriots of all types. He was not operating in a vacuum. Nor were his fellow insurrectionists or groups like the Red Brigade and Weather Underground.
While all the abovementioned revolutionists failed in their long-term aim of inspiring mass uprisings, they didn’t emerge out of nowhere. Faulty or not, they had clear ideologies and strategies, and originated from mass movements. People knew who these groups were politically and could accept or reject them on solid terms.
Luigi Mangione is a blank slate, a void that invites projection. For some of those desperate for change, Mangione is a revolutionary hero, Che Guevara with a hunky set of abs, not because of anything we know about the guy, but because that is what people want him to be. They want a savior, someone to lead us out of this mess or at least expedite a claim. They want a man on a white horse.
The insurrectionists weren’t the only anarchists stomping about in the 1800s. There were also anarchist revolutionaries like Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin advocated propaganda of the idea. He urged anarchists to join working-class organizations to educate workers to organize themselves. Kropotkin was not a pacifist. He thought that violence was sometimes necessary; however, he insisted that it be used sparingly and only on the economic establishment and not individuals. He also refused to condemn the insurrectionists, pointing out that violence met out by those with political and economic power is far more deadly and excessive than whatever resulted from propaganda of the deed.
The class-war of Luigi Mangione is a dead end, that is, if it is more than a projection. Time spent lionizing the young man is a waste. Hopes that a thousand or even a few copycats bloom, sowing the seeds for a movement-free revolution, is fantasy if not delusion. There is no man on a white horse. No one is coming to save us. That is not how change works.
You want change? Get out from behind your screens, start meeting in rooms – face to face, and organize. That’s the only way forward. And, read some Kropotkin while you are at it. Memoir of a Revolutionist is a good one. The Conquest of Bread is a classic, as is Mutual Aid.
And that is all I have to say about Luigi Mangione and the killing of Brian Thompson.