Sex toys, males in society, DEI & more: Luigi Mangione, suspect in CEO shooting, had unusual social media opinions
Luigi Mangione, arrested for allegedly shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had a diverse social media presence with varied political views — from praising the Unabomber to wanting a ban on sex toys in Japan. We take a look.
The social media profile of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspect arrested for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, shows a "hodgepodge" of political views, according to a report by the New York Post.
The eclectic mix of opinions ranged from praising the Unabomber to calling for a ban on sex toys in Japan, comparing modern America to late-era Rome during its downfall, and various conservative manosphere talking points.
The report noted that Mangione's activity on X (formerly known as Twitter) showed his engagement with philosophy accounts, posts on the "values of males in society" and technology, and commentary on the "decline of human virtue."
Who is Luigi Mangione?
An Ivy League student, the suspect graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 with a computer science degree.
He was apprehended in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a McDonald’s employee alerted authorities about a suspicious customer. Mangione has ties to San Francisco, was born and raised in Maryland, and currently has Honolulu, Hawaii, as his last known residence.
Also Read | New York prosecutors charge suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing with murder, court records show
We Take a Look At Some of his Posts:
- In a post in April 2024, Mangione replied to a comment about falling population rates in Japan and said that obsession with Japanese sex toys and pornography, not immigration, was the real problem.
- In the post, he suggested “encouraging natural human interaction, sex, physical fitness, and spirituality” by banning Tenga fleshlights and other sex toys and replacing “conveyor belt sushi and vending machines” with “real human waiters.”
- In various other posts, Mangione expressed support for authors, book characters, and even the Unabomber Ted Kacynski, among others. Some authors he named include Aldous Huxley, Jonathan Haidt, and Tim Urban.
- In April, he quoted Huxley's critique of capitalism 'Brave New World', writing, “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
- His Goodreads accounts showed Mangione's admiration for anti-establishment and terror figure Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber. He liked a quote from Kaczynski: “Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness.”
- It would be easy to write it off “as the manifesto of a lunatic,” in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies, Mangione wrote. “But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out. He was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people. 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.”
- He also often reposted author Tim Urban, who writes on tech topics such as AI and space exploration and praised his self-help book 'What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies'.
- He also wrote multiple posts "musing" on men and their role in society. “Men are made for impossible situations and daring feats. If you want to understand men better, just look at all the movies they’ve made, books they’ve written, and games they invented when they were young. Almost every single one is about a young man being thrust into a position or situation he doesn’t know if he can overcome. Many times he actually believes he can’t, so he initially refuses the challenge,” the post states.
- He was critical of author and psychologist Jordan Peterson for "not being concise enough with his language".
- He also posted about how modern America is mimicking the fall of the Roman empire.
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First Published:10 Dec 2024, 02:17 PM IST
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