We’re all a little disappointed he didn’t turn out to be our Exact Type of Communist. You’re a little put out about his referencing Kaczynski and his Twitter retweets. Here’s why, despite that, I’m vehemently pro-Luigi and you should be too.
His arc is a normal dude in America. He’s a mid 20s Silicon Valley guy. He engages with mainstream ideas in his cohort, but is otherwise not particularly political. To the extent that he has an ideology, like for society at large, it’s the ideology of the dominant class.
He suffers under his material conditions, but like everyone feels powerless. Despite his position of relative privilege, he has an invisible disability, a really gnarly injury to his spine. He, like everyone else, and more than most, feels the injustice of the US healthcare system in his bones.
Kaczynski is the tinderbox that sparks the explosion, not because of Kaczynski’s ideology, but because of a simple proposition: political violence is possible.
From there, the man needs no political education. He doesn’t need Marx or Lenin. His education is literally welded into his spine. He knows What Is To Be Done, and he does it without Delay.
His (class) character should be judged not for muddled beliefs he had before he became a political actor, but rather for the political action he took. Not who he retweeted: who he killed.
I think that there's a direct parallel that can be drawn between Luigi Mangione and Willem Van Spronsen and, in part, it is that both failed to grasp the urgent necessity of building a movement and the ultimate inadequacy of adventurism and propaganda of the deed.
Both are heroes in my mind and both showed a degree of courage that is rare and should be inspiring however there's a reason why basically everyone knows the name of Vladimir Lenin while Aleksandr Ulyanov is a footnote in history, why Willem Van Spronsen himself has become barely a footnote in history and why we can expect Luigi Mangione to join their ranks in a very short period of time. After all, the American memory is short and it is only getting shorter.
It's not possible for me to disagree with this position any more than I already do. This is not what Lenin wrote about, this is not what Lenin nor the Bolshevik party did. This is not what needs to be done Brian Thompson has already been replaced. A thousand Brian Thompsons could be killed and the merest of dents would be made in the system at best. I respect the actions of Luigi Mangione but he will never achieve the change he sought because of a fundamental failure inherent to his muddled political beliefs.
We need more than that, the world needs more than that.
agree with almost the whole post except this:
if this many ceos were being assassinated (whether by random people or by socialist groups) i would think it would mean we are on the brink of revolution lol, that is a staggering amount of assassinations
Yeah, that's a good point.
I'd say that it would have to be more of an indicator than a measurement; it's not like there's some magic number of CEOs being assassinated that we would need to reach and then, spontaneously, the masses would reach a point where they are ready for revolution but if that number of CEOs were getting merced then for every assassin you could assume that there's at least 10,000 people who are deeply sympathetic. With those sort of numbers you're easily looking at millions of sympathisers and at that point a single spark really can start a prairie fire, in this case.
GOOOOD post.
Barring shenanigans we'll eventually get this guy's motives. Obviously no matter the motive he speaks to a deep rot and also fervor in the American consciousness. However let's not get ahead of ourselves. The courage and heroism he displays is merely that of the man willing to kill. Its nobility depends on motives, and I think the potential his motive might not be so noble is still live (though it would be good if he was concerned about systemic injustice we don't have facts yet). If he did this because he thinks healthcare should be using more AI, is he still a hero? If he thought medbeds exist (I know he's probably not that kind of crank, but still).
However as a figure he speaks to the real rot and horrors of the system. We should keep our assessment on that level, especially since it's not like he's a representative of revolutionary praxis
You're exactly right about adventurism and its limits. What is to be done is not the murder of random figures, it is to dismantle the system. We have seen again that adventurism cannot do that any more than any other event or outrage. The only way to change the world is through organizing and creating a real mass movement.
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John Brown's actions were part of a tradition of religious fundamentalist opposition to Christian slavery, they were based on a radical theory and should not be dismissed as just individual zealotry. He did not just throw his life away to harm some slave owners, he had a plan for a guerrilla war waged from the Appalachian mountains by freed slaves and northern volunteers. You might argue that it could never have worked, but it was still different from just doing a cool thing and justifying it by believing it would inspire others to do the same.
The important point being that even if his internet history was nothing but Parenti quotes, this would still be true.
My favorite side note in this story has been that the day of the murder, blood still staining the sidewalk, the investors meeting that Thompson was in town for still went on. There was no delay out of respect, just business as usual. In the machine of capitalism, even those at the top of the hierarchy are still just cogs.
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