Hello comrades. In the interest of upholding our code of conduct - specifically, rule 1 (providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all) - we felt it appropriate to make a statement regarding the lionization of Luigi Mangione, the alleged United Healthcare CEO shooter, also known as “The Adjuster.”

In the day or so since the alleged shooter’s identity became known to the public, the whole world has had the chance to dig though his personal social media accounts and attempt to decipher his political ideology and motives. What we have learned may shock you. He is not one of us. He is a “typical” American with largely incoherent, and in many cases reactionary politics. For the most part, what is remarkable about the man himself is that he chose to take out his anger on a genuine enemy of the proletariat, instead of an elementary school.

This is a situation where the art must be separated from the artist. We do not condemn the attack, but as a role model, Luigi Mangione falls short. We do not expect perfection from revolutionary figures either, but we expect a modicum of revolutionary discipline. We expect them not simply to identify an unpopular element of society hitler-detector , but to clearly illuminate the causes of oppression and the means by which they are overcome. When we canonize revolutionary figures, we are holding them up as an example to be followed.

This is where things come back to rule 1. Mangione has a long social media history bearing a spectrum of reactionary viewpoints, and interacting positively with many powerful reactionary figures. While some commenters have referred to this as “nothing malicious,” by lionizing this man we effectively deem this behavior acceptable, or at the very least, safe to ignore. This is the type of tailism which opens the door to making a space unsafe for marginalized people.

We’re going to be more strict on moderating posts which do little more than lionize the shooter. There is plenty to be said about the unfolding events, the remarkably positive public reaction, how public reactions to “propaganda of the deed” may have changed since the historical epoch of its conception (and how the strategic hazards might not have), and many other aspects of the news without canonizing this man specifically. We can still dance on the graves of our enemies and celebrate their rediscovered fear and vulnerability without the vulgar revisionism needed to pretend this man is some sort of example of Marxist or Anarchist practice.

  • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    20·
    7 hours ago

    (Idunno, I’m depressed and had a bad day at work and I started typing and kept typing and this came out and no I’m not gonna read over it again to make sure I actually went anywhere with it thank you for coming to my ted talk)

    Folks shit is fucked and we all hate everything, but lets be real the mods are right on this one, @iie@hexbear.net nailed it with “Before you get mad at this mod post, consider the difference between “critical support” and “lionization.””

    I’m sure most if not all of you, like me, wish we could each do more to affect any real change in the world around us, for those of us doing praxis in our communities we know that just keeping people alive and housed isnt good enough, just treating the wounds won’t stop the guy running around stabbing people. Even when your job is directly saving lives it’s Sisyphean because without a solution to the problem the line of victims is never ending, let alone if you flip burgers or shuffle papers or saying hi to people in a walmart. I’m sure my fellow americans will agree last week was fucking awesome, its been a LONG time since something cool happened, there is nothing to look forwards to or hope for, even if you’re on the ground doing the good work, shit’s bleak as fuck.

    Then suddenly, woah! What the fuck? For real? Someone coldly and brazenly walked up to a health insurance CEO on the streets of new york in front of witnesses and executed him, and then he vanished without a trace?! And best of all, your coworkers are mentioning it to you and think its cool!!!?

    It wasn’t Teddy K’s misguided attack which mostly just killed a bunch of nobodies (correct me if I’m wrong, which I’d love to be in this case) and definitely did not cause what we saw with other health insurance companies rolling back draconian shit they were about to pull out of fear. it was fucking AWESOME! spongebob-i-fucking-love

    I mean how many dozens of times have you said or heard someone say “if only one of these mass shooters would take out bad people instead of random elementry schools or crowds of brown people, how is it possible that never happens!?” and then it DID!

    And we just wanted to enjoy it for fucking once because finally something genuinely good and surprising and new happens and then suddenly everyone at even your job is stoked this capitalist was assassinated in the streets, it was awesome, its the closest I felt to joyful optimism since I first radicalized during Bernie’s 2020 run.

    I genuinely felt hope for the future, was reminded that things can be better actually, which I know is foolish and unserious in this current case of propaganda of the deed by (maybe) a Nintendo character but I can’t help that I felt hope and joy like I did in 2020 when Bernie said maybe people should have homes and food and medicine and most of America was like “hey yeah, you’re right!”

    Back then I was naive and really though yoooo we got this! The bourgeoisie fucked up so bad let’s goooo! And then the ‘democratic’ apparatus swatted him away like a fly and Bernie thanked them for it

    For a moment I felt that naive optimism again. Oh man, wow! Everyone is on board with this, this is amazing, what if this continues happening and consciousness continues building and then and then and then heres how Bernie could still win

    So it sucks that our fun little vacation where we celebrated the Adjuster has come to an end, but that was always going to happen (as it should! Can’t be on vacation forever when there’s work to be done in the world do (or shit to post)) even if he had gotten away it wouldn’t be healthy to stay latched on, we would have had to move on sooner or later

    But i won’t be talking about luigi 1 year, 2 years from now, so I don’t think we should be trying this hard to hold onto this guy when its clear that doing so is harmful and unsafe to our community ideals, lets be real. Even if you strongly feel that he is rhetorically useful, he is more useful in the abstract. He doesn’t need to be Luigi Linguini the guy who interned for Civ 6 and also has reactionary posting history, he doesn’t need to be more than who he was: an american who was helpless before the abject cruelty of capitalism, and and hey aren’t we all?

    Hope things can become fun around here again soon (but not the kind of fun like going to parties and not masking that happens despite the needs of marginalized comrades; in this case, we should not Lionize, Canonize, or ‘Claim’ this guy as a member of the team, nor should be adopt an approach of live and let live just so we can achieve a false peace through the absence of tension but not the presence of justice: this would be liberalism of the highest order and shitposting website or not liberals should get the fuck out. I’ve seen many comrades make it clear they are made unsafe by this waiving away of Luigi’s politics and rhetoric, so thats it end of story.

    Luigi deserves a spot right next to can’t corner the dorner imo, someone who should not be personally celebrated because he wasn’t a good guy but who did a cool as fuck thing

    He did something super cool that has given us amazing rhetorical opportunities, which I will continue to gleefully use, and a temporary moment of reprieve before those insurance companies do that draconian shit they were about to do but stopped doing for a second anyway, but that’s all

    at the end of the day, when I think about this episode and my relation to it, it’s mostly as a TreatTM, and my TreatTM got worse and that happening made me sad, because I’m a dirty little treat goblin.

    Albeit, a dirtly little treat goblin who spends almost all day thinking about how much they despise capitalism and wanting a better more communist world, and one who also will be using this CEO’s murder as propaganda as a touchstone with other working class people, the moment of unity this assassination afforded the working class and the subsequent display of class unity the bourgeois gave us with the press coverage.

    (if luigi is a patsy, all bets are off)

    but thats just me

    be nice to each other if you can, have a nice day