Hello comrades. In the interest of upholding our code of conduct - specifically, rule 1 (providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all) - we felt it appropriate to make a statement regarding the lionization of Luigi Mangione, the alleged United Healthcare CEO shooter, also known as "The Adjuster."

In the day or so since the alleged shooter's identity became known to the public, the whole world has had the chance to dig though his personal social media accounts and attempt to decipher his political ideology and motives. What we have learned may shock you. He is not one of us. He is a "typical" American with largely incoherent, and in many cases reactionary politics. For the most part, what is remarkable about the man himself is that he chose to take out his anger on a genuine enemy of the proletariat, instead of an elementary school.

This is a situation where the art must be separated from the artist. We do not condemn the attack, but as a role model, Luigi Mangione falls short. We do not expect perfection from revolutionary figures either, but we expect a modicum of revolutionary discipline. We expect them not simply to identify an unpopular element of society hitler-detector , but to clearly illuminate the causes of oppression and the means by which they are overcome. When we canonize revolutionary figures, we are holding them up as an example to be followed.

This is where things come back to rule 1. Mangione has a long social media history bearing a spectrum of reactionary viewpoints, and interacting positively with many powerful reactionary figures. While some commenters have referred to this as "nothing malicious," by lionizing this man we effectively deem this behavior acceptable, or at the very least, safe to ignore. This is the type of tailism which opens the door to making a space unsafe for marginalized people.

We're going to be more strict on moderating posts which do little more than lionize the shooter. There is plenty to be said about the unfolding events, the remarkably positive public reaction, how public reactions to "propaganda of the deed" may have changed since the historical epoch of its conception (and how the strategic hazards might not have), and many other aspects of the news without canonizing this man specifically. We can still dance on the graves of our enemies and celebrate their rediscovered fear and vulnerability without the vulgar revisionism needed to pretend this man is some sort of example of Marxist or Anarchist practice.

  • AcidSmiley [she/her]
    ·
    7 days ago

    For example, I was especially irked by the removal of Awoo's 80+ upbeared comment near the beginning of the thread.

    Is that the one where she said she'll work with any anti-capitalist who isn't an outright Hitlerite? The one she immediately copypasted and repeated after her ban was lifted? I doubt you agree with this, given what you say in this comment chain, but if that would actually be your stance, that would mean you would welcome any transphobe, racist and sex pest into your org as long as they are also vaguely on the same page about the bourgeoisie as you. I'm not picking these examples for nothing, we see leftists collaborate with such elements for the sake of building a greater movement over and over again, and it reliably fails, because you are throwing the most revolutionary elements of society, which are always overrepresented in the marginalized groups, under the bus for the sake of courting the chauvinist labor aristocrat reactionaries, the least revolutionary element within the working class. This is how the US bourgeoisie was able to utilize racism in the trade unions to split labor activism, this is how Antideutsche split the German left with their support for zionist racists, outright terfs and known abusers within leftist orgs. It's the mistake Lenin made when he told the German communists to work with the social chauvinists who murdered their comrades and sided with the restaurative forces who ended up enabling the Hitlerists. It's the mistake that Stalin made when he ordered Mao to work with the Kuomintang against the Japanese imperial army, which fortunately ended in less of a catastrophy, but still led to thousands of Chinese communists being murdered by the KMT forces they were ordered to cozy up to.

    This is a dead end. You can only build coalitions with people you can trust to not actively harm you. Tey do not have to be perfect, but they do have to be reasonably safe to be around. You cannot put that trust in people so deeply infected with reactionary thought. You can try to educate them, people can change for the better, we have examples for that on this site, but you do not change them by tolerating their chauvinism. You have to show the chauvinist where he is wrong and where he has to respect the boundaries of his comrades. This is not possible when chauvinism is treated as normal and irrelevant or even acceptable, as it reliably is in the removed comments.

    Also, nothing of this has to do with not "taking advantage of the groundswell in mass support". Nobody here is arguing that you should completely disavow Luigi's actions, or should scold people who are having an awakening rn due to them. Literally nobody here says "it's bad that this guy shot a CEO". All that is taken objection to is that pointing out his views on this site, among PoC, trans people and women who are directly targeted by his eugenicist, transphobic and misogynist views is actively brushed aside by some people.

    At this point, outside of this site it's just memes and being happy about a dead CEO. Which is cool and good. I appreciate that. It's something all of us can and should actively work with to radicalize people. But as this progresses, there will be situations where we have to educate people about the limits of his views, and we are not prepared for that when we hero worship this guy or engage in wishful thinking where we make up redemption arcs for him.