The New Neo

Twenty-six year old Luigi Mangione has been detained as a person of interest in the murder of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson, and he’s emerged as a popular figure with a certain segment of the left. Call it the romantic nihilist segment, perhaps. But whatever you want to call it, this is a familiar phenomenon, a variation on a theme.

First analogy I thought about were the bank robbers and murderers Bonnie and Clyde, who were somewhat popular with some of the public – and notorious with the rest – in the 1930s and were made into tragic romantic hero and heroine in a popular movie of the 1960s. The real duo:

… escaped the police at Joplin, but left behind most of their possessions at the apartment, including Buck’s parole papers (three weeks old), a large arsenal of weapons, a handwritten poem by Bonnie, and a camera with several rolls of undeveloped film. Police developed the film at The Joplin Globe and found many photos of Barrow, Parker, and Jones posing and pointing weapons at one another. The Globe sent the poem and the photos over the newswire, including a photo of Parker clenching a cigar in her teeth and a pistol in her hand. The Barrow Gang subsequently became front-page news throughout America.

The photo of Parker posing with a cigar and a gun became popular. Jeff Guinn, in his book, Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, noted:

“John Dillinger had matinee-idol good looks and Pretty Boy Floyd had the best possible nickname, but the Joplin photos introduced new criminal superstars with the most titillating trademark of all—illicit sex. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were wild and young, and undoubtedly slept together.”

Then there’s Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who became something of a girl fan favorite when Rolling Stone featured a glamour shot of him on their cover.

Mangione himself seems to have been an admirer of the Unibomber, who was brilliant, a Harvard graduate, and who wrote a lengthy manifesto. The Unibomber (Ted Kaczynski) defies easy categorization, but he was anti-industrial and “called for a revolution to force the collapse of the worldwide technological system, and held a life close to nature, in particular primitivist lifestyles, as an ultimate ideal.” And, accordingly, he has been admired by ecofascists, the murderer Breivik, and assorted other nihilists and anarchists.

But another person Mangione most reminds me of – at least from what I know of him at this point – is the fictional character in Crime and Punishment, Rodion Raskolnikiv. This is what I’m referring to:

An impoverished student with a conflicted idea of himself, Raskolnikov (Rodya as his mother calls him) decides to kill a corrupt pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, with whom he has been dealing, with the idea of using the money to start his life all over, and to help those who are in need of it. It is later revealed that he also commits the murder as justification for his pride, as he wants to prove that he is “exceptional” in the way Napoleon was.

From the book’s text, Chapter VI:

Six weeks ago [Raskolnikov] had remembered the address; he had two articles that could be pawned: his father’s old silver watch and a little gold ring with three red stones, a present from his sister at parting. He decided to take the ring. When he found the old woman he had felt an insurmountable repulsion for her at the first glance, though he knew nothing special about her. He got two roubles from her and went into a miserable little tavern on his way home. He asked for tea, sat down and sank into deep thought. A strange idea was pecking at his brain like a chicken in the egg, and very, very much absorbed him.

Almost beside him at the next table there was sitting a student, whom he did not know and had never seen, and with him a young officer. They had played a game of billiards and began drinking tea. All at once he heard the student mention to the officer the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna and give him her address. This of itself seemed strange to Raskolnikov; he had just come from her and here at once he heard her name. Of course it was a chance, but he could not shake off a very extraordinary impression, and here someone seemed to be speaking expressly for him; the student began telling his friend various details about Alyona Ivanovna.

“She is first-rate,” he said. “You can always get money from her. She is as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a time and she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have had dealings with her. But she is an awful old harpy….”

And he began describing how spiteful and uncertain she was, how if you were only a day late with your interest the pledge was lost; how she gave a quarter of the value of an article and took five and even seven percent a month on it and so on. The student chattered on, saying that she had a sister Lizaveta, whom the wretched little creature was continually beating, and kept in complete bondage like a small child, though Lizaveta was at least six feet high.

“There’s a phenomenon for you,” cried the student and he laughed.

… I’ll tell you what. I could kill that damned old woman and make off with her money, I assure you, without the faintest conscience-prick,” the student added with warmth. The officer laughed again while Raskolnikov shuddered. How strange it was!

“Listen, I want to ask you a serious question,” the student said hotly. “I was joking of course, but look here; on one side we have a stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, ailing, horrid old woman, not simply useless but doing actual mischief, who has not an idea what she is living for herself, and who will die in a day or two in any case. You understand? You understand?”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” answered the officer, watching his excited companion attentively.

“Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals—and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange—it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Lizaveta’s finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated.”

“Of course she does not deserve to live,” remarked the officer, “but there it is, it’s nature.”

“Oh, well, brother, but we have to correct and direct nature, and, but for that, we should drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for that, there would never have been a single great man. They talk of duty, conscience—I don’t want to say anything against duty and conscience;—but the point is, what do we mean by them? Stay, I have another question to ask you. Listen!”

“No, you stay, I’ll ask you a question. Listen!”

“Well?”

“You are talking and speechifying away, but tell me, would you kill the old woman yourself?”

“Of course not! I was only arguing the justice of it…. It’s nothing to do with me….”

“But I think, if you would not do it yourself, there’s no justice about it…. Let us have another game.”

Raskolnikov was violently agitated. Of course, it was all ordinary youthful talk and thought, such as he had often heard before in different forms and on different themes. But why had he happened to hear such a discussion and such ideas at the very moment when his own brain was just conceiving… the very same ideas? And why, just at the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a tavern had an immense influence on him in his later action; as though there had really been in it something preordained, some guiding hint….

Of course, bck then there was no social media. Now, there is.

[NOTE: See this for reactions from Mangione’s family and friends.]