di ALGAMICA – December 14th 2024 (English translation of “In vita di Luigi Mangione“)
For those who have always been ideally engaged in a political struggle, it happens, one day yes and the next too, to commemorate those who died at work or martyrs who defended the cause of the oppressed and exploited, when not even executed by the police forces of the democratic states. We will continue to do it with a certain suffering even if we have always taken it into account.
In these brief notes, however, we want to spend a few notes and draw attention to Luigi Mangione in life who made a “sensational” gesture in the USA, which has thrown and continues to throw confusion among the conformists. The reason is soon said: he is gaining not only understanding, which would be, so to speak, in the order of things especially if he is a direct party involved, or a relative of an unfortunate person who had to suffer a wrong by the person has been killed, in this case Brian Thompson CEO of the insurance division of United Healthcare. But the facts are not in these terms, because Luigi Mangione is receiving boundless applause, perhaps even unexpectedly especially from the well-thinking people, which raises more than one question, especially because the “New York killer”, as he is defined by the major press hired by the various establishments, is not a clochard, a bum, a black man, an alcoholic in the grip of alcohol fumes, an Islamic terrorist, a Jihadist, or someone under the care of some mental health center and so on. No, he is a young white man of 26 years old, handsome, rich, with a degree in electronic engineering, who attended very prestigious schools and comes from a high-ranking family. Not only that, but – the hack writers comment Luigi wrote « an anti-capitalist political manifesto in which he claims his violent act by writing: “I apologize for the traumas created but it had to be done, these parasites had coming” ».
The confusion among the conformists is not so much about the gesture, let alone in the US where massacres of those who shoot wildly “in the crowd” occur precisely because society lives on totally impersonal capitalist economic-social relationships, where therefore, it is difficult if not impossible to get to the culprit. But the interested commentators see the confusion in the motivation on the one hand and in the nature of the subject who is responsible for the crime. Two really worrying factors. Because the “killer” is not an unbalanced person, whose causes should be understood anyway, but he is a young man from an excellent family and with anti-capitalist motivations. So what is happening in the most democratic, richest, most evolved, most emancipated, most advanced, most militarized country in the world? There is something to think about, and they are really worried, because when they want to they also are capable to read between the folds of the facts, and if they are worried it means that they perceive that dark clouds are gathering on the horizon, not only in the US but also in our Italy where the health structures are headed towards the same path as the US. Why is Velia Alvich, again from Corriere della Sera , surprised that in the US « […] that (absurd) sympathy for the killer » is developing? and why « One morning the Americans woke up and discovered that they were on the side of a killer »? Or again she wrote « a cause so heartfelt that some clients have decided to virtually attack the McDonald’s headquarters in downtown Altoona, Pennsylvania where Mangione was arrested ». In short, what is really happening at this stage of the capitalist mode of production if in the most democratic country in the world the younger generation takes to the streets against the genocidal State of Israel to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and a young white man from a good family plans and kills a CEO, claiming it with a manifesto justifying the action in the name of anti-capitalism?
Obviously we take it for granted that many democrats or even left-wing figures if not even “communists” turn up their noses at a violent, individual action that all in all will not change the fate of history and even less the fate of the conditions of the patients into health care facilities of whose the murdered CEO was financing the hospitalization. There will always be those who will affirm that only popular and mass revolt produces substantial changes in society if not even revolutions as history teaches. That is, clichés that have the face, color and flavor of those who pronounce them.
But this is not what we are talking about, but what does Luigi Mangione’s gesture mean in the US at this stage, towards a certain character representing certain institutional and social structures. On the one hand it is the echo that the gesture is having not only among people who continuously live the relationship with healthcare to take care of their loved ones, but among masses of young people who use Tik Tok or other means that praise Luigi Mangione, while gadgets of all kinds are produced and sold out.
One thing is the gesture of a madman who shoots wildly in a school or any place frequented by several people, that is, in the crowd; quite another thing is the gesture of a person like Luigi Mangione – we repeat – in a precise historical context, into a specific capitalistic phase, and toward a leading figure in the health care economic network, thus not a politician, against whom the press cleverly directs criticism to save the mechanisms that uphold the laws of profit.
Just to give you an idea of what we are talking about, the poor devils (black or white) and especially single black mothers with their diabetic children do not have access to care, the rest have internalized the quest for immortality. They are individualistic people who do everything and cure themselves with everything to snatch 5 minutes from the death. Then there are people who, in the face of physical or psychological trauma, become addicted to opioid drugs, cannot stop using drugs and then die (the latter are about 170 thousand a year).
As we recently wrote in Once Upon a Time the America « […] A crisis that afflicts the social classes, especially the white European middle class that is starting to no longer compose the ultra-majority structure of the population among the new generations. They are social classes that in mass psychology feel surrounded from within and without and that believe the causes of the crisis to be the result of a plot hatched against the nation and the people by internal and external agents, and by the same elites of the big corporations […] ».
Thus, in a Luigi Mangione, unsatisfied needs are condensed which develop hatred, resentment and a desire for justice which in this specific case trigger the vengeful act.
Otherwise, there would be no explanation for the general approval of the masses on the one hand and the dismay on the part of the establishment interpreted by the media that raise the alarm, such as to justify a possible accusation of terrorism against those who promoted an act of revenge interpreting a popular will. This does not surprise us at all, liberalism has produced racism and slavery for centuries, why should we be surprised by a possible accusation of terrorism?
Now between the possible charge of terrorism for Luigi Mangione and the claim “Free Mangione”, that is “Freedom for Mangione”, there is all the distance that separates the establishment on one side and the layers of impoverished middle class and the poorer multiethnic masses on the brink of desperation on the other side.
Be careful: impoverished folks are not asking for clemency or understanding for Luigi Mangione but ” Free ” that is Freedom , so the denying of the principle of individual responsibility, because he took on a common cause, of the many suffering and humiliated by structures like that of CEO Brian Thompson, therefore Luigi is not guilty. And if an economic, political and social power of the richest and most powerful nation in the world responds only with repression, it means that within it all those relationships are cracking, above all economic ones, that have kept it alive for several centuries.
In closing, to any reader who might turn up their nose at what we are trying to reflect, we would like to ask this question: have you ever visited a RSA, which is a private health care facility for elderly where the patient’s relatives have to bring drinking water in bottles because the facility does not provide to them, where the staff, precarious and enormously blackmailed, is trained in a certain way? And if a relative asks for information there is always a vague answer such as: “I am not from this department”, “I do not deal with these things”, “it is not my turn” and so on while the relative accumulates anger and impotence. And precisely because of the mechanism that escapes the responsibility to cling to, very often unpleasant behaviors occur towards hospital staff by relatives. Do we want to justify them? No, we just want to try to explain the cause of the facts.
Let’s be clear: it’s a tough job in hospitals in general and into the RSA and it’s even tougher into those owned by private companies, that are incorporates, many of which are owned by Opus Dei or by big capitalists like Mr. Angelucci etc. Precisely for this reason, all the staff involved should be rewarded. But it so happens that the CEO is managing the structure must guarantee maximum profit and be guaranteed by the political democracy of the parties for the purpose envisaged.
In short, we can say that Luigi Mangione’s gesture is particular for two reasons: a) the first reason is that he did not shoot in the crowd; b) a second reason consists in having unloaded the responsibility for the health corruption on a direct responsible person, a CEO, rather than on a politician who legally guarantees its functional exploitation and profit.
To conclude and not leave anything between the folds: do we hope that many Luigi Mangione arise, or that many lone avengers organize themselves? None of these, but only the desire to bring to the attention of those who should question the social disease that now pervades the West starting right from its apex, that is, the USA, which is producing waves of rebellion at various levels such as those following the killing of George Floyd, those in support of the struggle of the Palestinian people and against the genocide by the Zionist State of Israel and finally the gesture of Luigi Mangione who collected the growing anger on the commodification of healthcare and unloaded it against a CEO of the sector.
The social revolution, we tell to the doubting, is not a momentum X but it is a motion that proceeds in waves caused by the contradictions that the capitalist mode of production causes for which it is not possible to find solutions.
ALGAMICA (Alessio Galluppi, Michele Castaldo) – 14th December 2024