Luigi Mangione, Unabomber Redux

The suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson appears to admire Ted Kaczynski. Is that a clue to his motives?

On Monday, December 9, 2024, Luigi Mangione was arrested for the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. As police officers hustled the handcuffed 26-year old suspect out of the vehicle and into the Blair County Courthouse in Pennsylvania, with his face contorted into hateful anger, Mangione blurted out at the top of his lungs, “This is extremely unjust, and an insult to the intelligence of the American people. This is lived experience."

What Mangione meant by that is anyone’s guess, but at least he didn’t protest, pace Lee Harvey Oswald, “I’m just a patsy,” which would have put the cat among the conspiracy pigeons. By Tuesday reports emerged of a 261-word “manifesto” penned by Mangione, which at the length of a typical paragraph would not seem to rise to the gravitas of the descriptor (seemingly only used these days to describe the writings of killers and mass murderers), which has references to “parasites” who “had it coming” because the US has the "most expensive healthcare system in the world" but "ranks #42 in life expectancy.” His ego bolstered by his violent acts, he wrote that while other people in the past had exposed such corporations' "corruption and greed", he was "the first to face it with such brutal honesty." Here it is in full (published on the journalist Ken Klippenstein’s substack):

“To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

Such sentiments are also reflected in Mangione’s many social media postings, one of which included an interest in the writings of Ted Kaczynski, AKA the Unabomber. Specifically, Mangione left a four-star review of Kaczynski’s manifesto— Industrial Society and Its Future—about which Mangione went on to note in his review that “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtlessly write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies.” While admitting that Kaczynski “was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people,” Mangione qualified his condemnation thusly: “While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.” Extreme, indeed, and now it is being reported that Mangione had himself considered planting a bomb in Manhattan, but was concerned about killing innocent people, so instead opted “to kill the CEO at his own bean counting conference.”

In his review of Kaczynski’s manifesto, Mangione added that “it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.” He also shared thoughts someone else had written about Kaczynski in a Reddit thread, quoting a commenter who had described his acts as “war and revolution,” saying that Kaczynski “had the balls to recognize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere” and that “‘Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.”

Let’s look at Kaczynski’s manifesto a little closer, in the context of trying to understand what types of beliefs lead people to conclude that murder is, in fact, justified killing, a type of “just war”, with a single individual as the lone combatant.

Recall that the Harvard-educated mathematical prodigy turned domestic terrorist, between 1978 and 1995 the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski targeted individuals for death with bombs delivered through the mail, killing three and leaving 23 others maimed. In his rambling 50-page manifesto, Industrial Society and its Future, originally published in The New York Times and elsewhere in hopes that some reader would recognize the degenerationist rhetoric of the author (Kaczynski’s brother did, which is how he was caught), Kaczynski opined:

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.

Modern Americans, Kaczynski griped, are “decadent leisured aristocrats” who are “bored, hedonistic, and demoralized,” nothing more than “domesticated animals.” Speaking in the first person plural “we” (or occasionally “FC”—Freedom Club), like many revolutionary Marxists before him, Kaczynski advocated revolution:

We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a political revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.

This, Kaczynski continued, is to be followed by the introduction of a new ideology “that opposes technology and the industrial society…so that when and if the system collapses, the remnants will be smashed beyond repair, so that the system cannot be reconstituted.”

In a 2010 postscript to the manifesto, penned in prison, Kaczynski reflected on the many commentaries he had read about his writings, some of which accused him of unoriginality and compared him to radical environmentalists (handwritten draft pictured below):

If there is anything new in my approach, it is that I’ve taken revolution seriously as a practical proposition. Many radical environmentalists and “green” anarchists talk of revolution, but as far as I am aware none of them have shown any understanding of how real revolutions come about, nor do they seem to grasp the fact that the exclusive target of revolution must be technology itself, not racism, sexism, or homophobia.

The cover of Kaczynski’s book (above) captures the bleak perspective such dystopian pessimism evokes. Unfortunately, although his declinism was driven, in part, by mental illness, his views are shared by a great many people, Mangione apparently being one of them. There are many others. In fact, compare the sentiments of Kaczynski and Mangione to those of environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who famously scolded the audience at the 2019 U.N. Climate Action Summit:

People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

In a speech at the UN Climate Change COP24 Conference in 2018 Thunberg admonished attendees:

Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few.

And at the UN Climate Action Summit on September 23, 2019 Thunberg warned:

You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

Let’s hope Thunberg remains non-violent in her actions in response to such extreme beliefs about the evils of capitalism, corporatism, and profit incentives.

Then there are the prognostications of Eliezer Yudkowsky in his widely quoted Time magazine AI doomsday screed:

Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in “maybe possibly some remote chance,” but as in “that is the obvious thing that would happen.”

How obvious is our coming collapse? Yudkowsky punctuates the point:

If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter.

What actions might be justified by someone who truly believes that someone or something could lead to the extinction of all life on earth? You do the math.

And let’s not forget Christopher Ryan’s conclusion in his 2019 book Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress, that “civilization is ultimately a tragic mistake.” Why? “It’s heartbreaking to think about all the suffering that’s been caused over the millennia, and just how misguided a pursuit this has been.” The decline began with agriculture, Ryan avers, because it brought with it hierarchy, oppression, violence, pollution, overpopulation, communicable diseases and pandemics, and ultimately depression, suicide, and deaths of despair.

I could go on and on with such examples because for at least a century and a half public intellectuals and academic scholars have been predicting the imminent collapse of Western civilization, even as the ideals and institutions that insure its success have grown: science and technology, reason and Enlightenment humanism, democracy and universal franchise, property rights and the rule of law, free enterprise and free trade, and the rights of individuals expanded to include all humans and even members of other sentient species. You would think academics and intellectuals—the very people who promote such values—would be singing their own praises for such progress; but no, they’re gloomier than ever.

An Amazon book scan of the word string “The Coming Crisis” produces titles like The Coming Financial Crisis (2015), The Global Water Crisis (2008), The Coming Bond Market Collapse (2013), Get Prepared Now!: Why a Great Crisis is Coming and How You Can Survive It (2015), ISIS, Iran and Israel: What You Need to Know about the Current Mideast Crisis and the Coming Mideast War (2016), Code Red: How to Protect Your Savings from the Coming Crisis (2013), The Coming Oil Crisis (2012), The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System (2014), Coming Climate Crisis? (2012), The Coming Economic Armageddon (2010), The Coming Inflation Crisis (2014), The Coming Famine (2011), Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis (2012), and 55 more pages of titles in a similar vein.

Is it any wonder that an intelligent and well-educated young man like Luigi Mangione (he attended an all-boys private school in Baltimore for which he was valedictorian of his class, then earned two degrees in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania) would turn to violence as a solution to this perceived—however misguided—threat to the welfare of citizens, if not the existence of civilization itself?

Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of The Michael Shermer Show, and the author of many bestselling books, including Why People Believe Weird Things, The Science of Good and Evil, The Believing Brain, The Moral Arc, and Heavens on Earth. His latest book is Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational. His next book is Truth: What it is, How to Find it, Why it Matters, forthcoming in the Fall of 2025.