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.

  • Dirt_Possum [any, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    4 hours ago

    We don’t need to praise him to use him as a tool to get people to recognize a shared struggle.

    That’s all good and fine but neither should people be banned or have their posts removed just because they contain memes that do praise him, like doing so is somehow too ideologically impure for this site.

    And if the situation calls for praising him in order to best use him as a radicalization tool, then we shouldn’t be chided for doing so. As one of any number of possible examples, if I’m in a group of libs who are going on about how cool he is because of what he did, then I am going to laugh right along with them, agree, and encourage it. I will probably even throw out a “yeah, but he did also say some seriously shitty things too” if I get the chance, just to get them to think about those things as well, but what I definitely will not do is go into some diatribe about how actually nerd he deserves no praise because he got caught up in the same disgusting early fashy-pipeline US culture war nonsense that some of those libs also believe.

    Of course here on hexbear we’re not (usually) in that group of libs and amongst only other leftists it is fair to expect our community be more ideologically correct and consistent. But sharing the meme that group of libs was loving and laughing at is not being ideologically incorrect and it should not be a removal or banworthy offense. None of us here ascribe to the reactionary garbage that has come out that Luigi believes (or believed, at least as of whenever he last posted about it). GoFundMe’s for him should be removed. Saying something in the spirit of the moment in a meme thread like “Luigi rocks!” where it’s all about a CEO getting got should not be removed.

    Someone else in thread said that the mods want an ideologically pure reading group, not a site where we post memes. And that’s mostly is what is really at issue here, at least to me. Everyone is arguing about the minutia of precisely where the line is that cuts someone who did a cool thing off from our collective critical support. That’s not a bad conversation to have. But for fucks sake, don’t go around removing anything positive that people say about the person who, regardless of the purity of their intentions, just did something that everyone in this shithole imperial core is talking about and that all of us here want to happen on a larger (more organized) scale.

    OP (edit: oops, that wasn’t OP. Sorry u/aocapitulator) is comparing Luigi to Dorner. I don’t think that’s accurate, but ok fine. We have a (very cool from everything I’ve seen) regular poster here who has Dorner in the telletubby sun as their PFP. It is a great PFP. But I would bet dollar to a donut (or whatever the fuck the saying is) that whichever mod who has been removing all the Luigi posts and comments would ban a user that changed their PFP to the smiling Luigi image right now.

    Also, all the stuff Awoo said that got removed.