The Growing Threat of Political Violence From the Left
Published Jun 11, 2025 at 6:00 AM EDT
At a recent protest in Midtown Manhattan—one of many against Donald Trump's administration—a pair of masked women stood quietly in front of the stone lions that loom over the New York Public Library, a life-sized cutout of Luigi Mangione propped between them.
No one seemed to mind. As chants against authoritarianism echoed down Fifth Avenue and homemade signs called for due process and migrant rights, Mangione's effigy stood unchallenged—just another figure in one particular demonstration's crowded landscape.
Mangione, 26, who is charged with shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a targeted attack last December, remains something of an enigma more than six months since he was arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with Thompson's murder. His political views — or what are known of them — are contradictory if not incoherent. He was the highly educated scion of a well-off Baltimore family who had no obvious beef with the capitalist system of which he benefited. Mangione wrote about his chronic back injury, but he was never insured by UnitedHealth.
None of that has stopped a left-wing activist movement from embracing him and coopting his image as a vigilante fighting against the perceived wrongs of the American healthcare system. In today's fractured political climate, such selective silence is becoming increasingly common.
https://www.newsweek.com/political-violence-left-wing-extremism-donald-trump-gaza-deportation-riots-2083162
