An eye for an eye. You reap what you sow. And now: “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.” 

On Dec. 4, 2024, Luigi Mangione allegedly shot and killed Brian Thompson, former CEO of UnitedHealthcare. The public’s reaction was swift — not shock, not sorrow, but something closer to vindication. An Emerson College poll revealed that almost half of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 considered the act “acceptable or somewhat acceptable,” reflecting their deep frustration with the healthcare system. Though this outrage is justified, hailing Mangione as a hero ignores the deeper consequences of legitimizing political violence. 

From the legend of Robin Hood to fictional antiheroes like Batman and the Punisher, widespread approval of vigilante violence is nothing new. These figures exist outside the law, driven by the belief that traditional avenues for justice have failed. This approval extends beyond fiction, as seen in the real-life cases of Marianne Bachmeier, who shot her daughter’s killer in a courtroom, or the Louisiana father who killed his child’s molester. In these instances, the direct and personal nature of the harm — the murder of a daughter, the assault of a child, or even a fictional hero avenging a loved one — elicits a moral clarity that society finds compelling. The provocation is undeniable, and the response, though violent, is understandable.

While acts of vigilante justice can sometimes be excused on moral grounds, Mangione does not meet this standard. When Bachmeier fired seven rounds at the man who took her daughter’s life, her reasoning was devastatingly simple: “I did it for you, Anna.” She did not act on principle; she acted out of grief. Mangione, in contrast, has never claimed to be acting for anyone at all. 

As an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Baltimore family, he was neither disenfranchised nor a victim of corporate exploitation. He had no terminally ill mother — he wasn’t even insured under UnitedHealthcare. In his confirmed manifesto, Mangione calls his plan “fairly trivial,” justifies it with a plain “these parasites simply had it coming,” and cites vague statistics about healthcare costs without ever claiming to fight for, or even acknowledging, victims of medical exploitation. This is not the language of someone compelled by desperation; it is the language of someone choosing violence as a statement. There is no mention of seeking justice for healthcare victims, no clear beneficiaries of his violence — only revenge.

Mangione’s choice to act refuses to be neatly pigeonholed. His privilege and lack of personal connection complicates attempts to frame him as a righteous avenger, yet the sheer scale of harm he sought to retaliate against makes his motives difficult to dismiss — especially amid the viral media storm that has framed him a martyr rather than a killer. 

This shift in public sentiment forces us to reconsider what justice truly means. Mangione’s actions are neither as morally clear-cut as the media portrays nor without historical precedent. Time and time again, history has taken acts of political violence and retrospectively reframed them as justice — often with a cautionary undertone. Leaders of oppressive regimes have been assassinated in the name of preventing future harm, justified as necessary vigilantism. John Brown, who led violent raids against pro-slavery forces in the 19th century, was initially condemned but later rebranded as a hero of justice, one of the many to undergo this transformation. Yet, if history complicates our understanding of such acts, it also serves as a warning.

Even if one accepts the premise that systemic harm constitutes violence, vigilante violence provides no real solution. If every individual were to act as judge, jury, and executioner, society would dissolve into chaos. Killing a CEO doesn’t end corporate greed, assassinating a dictator doesn’t free a nation, and murdering a criminal doesn’t eliminate crime. Rather, extrajudicial retribution creates power vacuums, further suffering, and unintended consequences that spiral out of control.

Individual retribution rarely dismantles the systems it seeks to destroy. The targeted murder of an individual CEO, as in the case of Mangione, does not succeed in undoing the decades of corporate exploitation it critiques or provide a blueprint for a better world. All it leaves behind is a spectacle — one that can be mythologized or condemned but rarely leads to meaningful structural change. 

The question of whether Mangione’s actions were an act of misguided ideology or a grim inevitability in a broken system has no easy answer. Perhaps the greater concern, then, is not whether his actions were justified, but rather that so many found them compelling in the first place. Change is afoot. If disillusionment with the system continues to curdle into support for retributive violence, what seems like an outlier today may become a pattern tomorrow.