Luigi: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Sympathy for a Devil?

On December 5, 2024, a leading publication ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One comment stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is deeply anxious about the world around him, one where ‘everything is accelerating whether we like it or not’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “depose”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by health insurance companies to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione had a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the press in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.