It is shocking for many that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s accused killer, Luigi Mangione, has acquired a devoted fanbase.
“The seething anger underneath showed you that Luigi, at least for a certain part of the population, has tremendous support,” 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 a new one.
As it happens, Mangione is the beneficiary of a very American tradition. Cheering for murderous outlaws is as American a tradition as apple pie. Ironically, for the Steve Bannons who seek to make America great again, popular support for Mangione is a return to form, a reincarnation of a time when Americans regularly romanticized violent killers.
The United States is a complicated, mercurial oddity, as tolerant of acts of incredible violence as it is capable of unprecedented acts of benevolence. It’s a historical marvel — a country settled and tamed by religious zealots, outlaws, orphans, fortune-seekers, bastards, and refugees, each in pursuit of self-determination. With such a motley assortment of founding members, America’s DNA is equal parts felon, evangelist, beggar, and conqueror. Rather than any one of these characteristics emerging as supreme, they have, over the course of centuries, comingled, making it possible for the public to hold such contradictory positions as: Crime is bad, though some crime is good.
The truth is America is a messy, violent country filled with messy, violent people, many of whom will tolerate and even cheer deadly outlaws so long as the violence is directed against a perceived greater evil. It’s this inclination that has made folk heroes of so many killers, including those who cropped up suddenly during the Great Depression.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, known popularly as “Bonnie and Clyde,” enjoyed popular support during their murderous multistate crime spree. They were seen by many as “romantic Robin Hoods” whose sins could be overlooked because they were supposedly striking back at greedy bankers. (The romanticized version of the duo was also popularized by a news media eager to sensationalize the story for the benefit of depression-weary audiences.) Never mind Bonnie and Clyde were no anti-bank crusaders but, rather, maladjusted sociopaths who targeted mostly backroad shops, grocery stores, and gas stations.
By the time they were gunned down in 1934, the two had murdered 13 people. Yet the couple’s funeral attracted more than 10,000 onlookers. Idle curiosity alone cannot account for a crowd of this size.
Even today, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, where Bonnie and Clyde were killed in an ambush set by police, opinion of the duo is split. In the Bienville Parish Journal, author Brad Dison wrote last year that whenever he asks locals about the celebrity criminals, these are the most common responses:
“They weren’t as bad as people said they were.”
“They didn’t do all of the things the newspapers said they did.”
“They were good people.”
“They got what they deserved.”
“They were nothing but white trash.”
“They cared for nobody but themselves.”
There’s more.
John Dillinger, whose gang murdered 10 people and wounded seven more, was likewise seen as an agent of justice for targeting banks. His celebrity and popular support grew such 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” of Division of Investigation agents (the DOI was a predecessor to the FBI).
Nearly 10,000 people lined up to view his body before burial.
Charles Arthur Floyd, known best as “Pretty Boy Floyd,” definitely murdered at least two people and may have been involved in at least four additional murders. Yet he was seen in his time as a “Robin Hood figure, beloved of America’s dispossessed and downtrodden of the Great Depression,” for targeting banks, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.
One paper even dubbed 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 could walk around in public unmolested and even went to church in Earlsboro.”
The pinko proto-hippie Woody Guthrie tried to immortalize Floyd in song, repeating the myth that the trigger-happy thief would tear up mortgages during his bank heists.
The song goes:
Then he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.
But a many a starving farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.
Etcetera, etcetera.
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 soft spot for outlaws can be seen in its support for such real-life criminals as Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Both were cheered for supposedly fighting for the poor against the rich and the greedy. Never mind their kill counts, approximately 10 and three, respectively.
We don’t even need to get into the details of the messier, modern examples of Bernie Goetz, who, during the 1980s New York City crime epidemic, shot four black men he claimed were trying to rob him, and Gary Plauché, who executed his son’s rapist, to drive home the point, which is this: A significant number of Americans will tolerate and even support outlaw violence so long as the trigger man is thought be to targeting a grave evil.
Plauché served no time in jail. Goetz was convicted only of criminal possession of a handgun and served less than a year in jail.
With this long-standing contrarian affection for outlaws, it’s no surprise that Mangione has a devoted following. He fights “the man” — in this case, private health insurance companies. While Mangione’s popularity is undoubtedly tasteless and ignorant, it is hardly unique or unprecedented. America isn’t drifting into dark, uncharted waters. Americans are merely reacting in their usual fashion.
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But don’t despair that your neighbor might celebrate Luigi Mangione. Marvel that a country with such a tolerance for violence and lawlessness should even exist in the first place. Marvel further that such a country could also be capable of historical acts of generosity, such as the Marshall Plan.
America is a wild, messy, wonderous place, home to CEO-killer and G-man alike.