A poster depicting Luigi Mangione hangs outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel, in New York, on Dec. 12.Julia Demaree Nikhinson/The Associated Press
Ed Butts is a Guelph, Ont., writer and author of This Game of War.
Does murder suspect Luigi Mangione fit the criteria for an avenging folk hero – a dispenser of justice for the downtrodden? In the wake of the brazen murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York street, some Americans seem to think so. In what Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has called a “visceral response from people across the country who feel cheated, ripped off and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies,” social media has had a surge of posts condemning not the accused killer, but the victim, saying that Mr. Thompson “got what he deserved.”
While a manhunt was underway, even before anyone knew what the killer’s motive was, sympathizers were focusing on what they took to be a message in the form of the words “deny,” “depose” and “defend” written on bullets found at the crime scene. The words are associated with the health insurance industry’s reputation for refusing to cover claims.
When Mr. Mangione was arrested in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., after an employee tipped off police, the McDonald’s began receiving negative online reviews because of the “snitch.” Social-media users have expressed support for Mr. Mangione using the hashtag #FreeLuigi. Online, entrepreneurs are already hawking Mangione merchandise such as stickers and T-shirts with the words “DON’T DENY MY COVERAGE” and “IN THIS HOUSE LUIGI MANGIONE IS A HERO. END OF STORY.”
The concept of a criminal as a folk hero goes all the way back to medieval times and the legend of Robin Hood, the English outlaw who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. No chivalric knight in shining armour, he was a commoner who did what many commoners wished they could do, but couldn’t. Historians still dispute whether or not there was actually a historic Robin Hood, but the idea of someone who championed those who were oppressed by the powerful was important.
There certainly have been real historic individuals whose criminal acts have earned them public sympathy and even led to them being cloaked in the mantle of folk hero, even if they didn’t really deserve it.
Jesse James (1847-1882), a former Confederate guerrilla and perhaps the most notorious bandit of the post-Civil War Old West, was seen by defeated southerners as an unrepentant Confederate avenger who looted banks of Yankee money. According to legend, he then handed out his gains to dispossessed farmers and widows. His legend as a tragic hero was helped along by the fact that he was ultimately betrayed by a “dirty little coward.”
Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd (1904-1934) was among the most infamous of the Depression-era bank robbers, whose ranks included the likes of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. Floyd was an Oklahoma farm boy who turned to crime. His fellow Okies, whose farms had been repossessed because they couldn’t meet mortgage payments, cheered him every time he pulled off a robbery. Floyd enhanced his Robin Hood image when, in the course of a hold-up, he would burn the bank’s mortgage files. Folk singer Woody Guthrie immortalized Floyd in his song Pretty Boy Floyd, in which he sang that some men would rob you with a fountain pen, but an outlaw would never drive a family from their home.
Desperado Bill Miner (1847-1913), who robbed trains in British Columbia in the early 1900s, had the admiration of railroad-hating Canadians who objected to what they considered the Canadian Pacific Railway’s exorbitant rates. Miner was arrested and sent to prison, but then broke out. Many Canadians cheered him on and said they’d gladly hide him from the police. One admirer explained, “Old Bill Miner ain’t so bad. He only robs the CPR once every two years. The CPR robs us all every day.”
Of course, the romantic outlaw-hero tale overlooks the fact that there are real life victims involved. Jesse James killed several people in the course of his criminal career, including an unarmed bank clerk. Pretty Boy Floyd was believed to be responsible for the killing of at least two law enforcement officers. Bill Miner never killed anybody, but he was a career criminal who stole from a lot of people and spent long stretches of his life in prison between armed robberies and jail breaks. None of them were Robin Hoods.
Regardless of what anybody might think of the profits-before-people policies of American health insurance companies, Brian Thompson was a victim. Nobody deserves to be gunned down on the street.