They charged him with terrorism because that’s the only way New York state can bring first-degree murder charges.
Also:
Mangione’s notebook allegedly refers to the investor conference that Thompson was set to attend on the day of his killing. “This investor conference is a true windfall … and — most importantly — the message becomes self evident.” [emphasis mine]
They charged him with terrorism because that’s the only way New York state can bring first-degree murder charges.
Well that’s quite a stupid law then.
It gets worse. If you kill a cop or judge they can also pin the first on you. The rest of us don’t count.
Edit- Getting a pretty negative response here, and not really sure why. I support Luigi and what he did, but we don’t need to rewrite the dictionary. If oligarchs decide to oppress, they will (and should) get terrorists.
It was terrorism. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t necessary. Squeeze people the way insurance companies do, and eventually they’ll start to bite back. If oligarchs don’t want people to resort to terrorism, they can loosen their grip any second. Keep fucking people over, and we’ll get more terrorism… it’s a pretty predictable cycle that boils down to ‘fuck around, find out’.
‘Terrorism’ is a code word, much like ‘communist’ in the 1950s or ‘evil’ in a cheap sci-fi movie. It means what the government wants it to mean. It’s not what happened on 12/4/2024.
We’re bashing heads over denotation vs connotation. I’m sticking with the former. Making up or ignoring definitions is a big part of what makes politics infuriating; we don’t need to do that to Luigi.
I don’t feel intimidated by luigi, I’m sure most americans are not intimidated by someone who killed a ceo. He’s not a terrorist, he’s a hero and soon to be martyr.
I bet the billionaires feel threatened tho
All of these terms can be true at the same time, y‘know the sentence “one man‘s terrorist is another man‘s freedom fighter”. He‘s fighting for sick ppl and terrorizing the CEOs, I think that‘s what the comment was trying to say. The CEOs are also the ones up the hierarchy and in league with government, police, prosecution and media. They likely deliberately chose to use this term on him to bring to mind for people the disgust or fear response they get when the worst terror attack they have heard of is brought to mind.
So you can deny it completely (in the case of the charge which hopefully the lawyers can do well), but also you can argue by itself the meaning of the word and how it‘s used and if it‘s always bad (like say bring example of Nelson Mandela who was labelled a terrorist and is now widely known as freedom fighter).
So terrorist is in my point of view a politically charged term which is selectively applied by the people in charge to form a public opinion.
Every murder can be called terrorism if this is.
It can be - depends on the motive. The word ‘terrorism’ stirs up some pretty extreme imagery, but it doesn’t actually take much to meet the description.
If I stick a knife into a bag of potato chips on the shelf of a Walmart just for shits and giggles, I’ve just committed vandalism.
If I stick a knife into a bag of potato chips on the shelf of a Walmart because I don’t like that Walmart drives local shops out of business, I’ve just committed terrorism.
Luigi committed terrorism. Don’t conflate that with ‘Luigi is bad’ - he’s a fucking hero, and we desperately need more people like him.
No he didn’t. He wasn’t attempting to influence policy, or terrorize the institutions. He was exacting revenge against the person he felt was most responsible for suffering. That’s not terrorism, that’s murder.
It was objectively not terrorism. Luigi acted in self defense.
Your liberalism is showing.
I mean, it was violence for the purpose of promoting a social/political view…which is terrorism.
Whether or not it is justified given our current circumstances, or the fact that the government is going to weaponize the law as much as they can against him are separate issues.
It can be a real uncomfortable discussion if/when terrorism is justified when all other avenues of peaceful change have failed, but it is what it is.
Edit: apparently a lot of people think it only counts as terrorism when you disagree with it.
What social view was he attempting to promote? Afaik, he was exacting revenge against the person he felt was most responsible for his and other people’s suffering. That’s not terrorism, that’s murder. Had he issued ultimatums, and published his manifesto, then maybe it would be terrorism.
It seems to be the same social views we are all talking about now regarding for profit health insurance being a parasite on our nation. He left messages at the scene on bullet casings referencing a book criticizing the health care industry, and from what I read he didn’t even have UnitedHealth insurance. I recall the early reporting after his arrest including a note referencing how it had to be done and he was the first.
If it turns out he really was just disgruntled and just wanted to kill a CEO for purely personal reasons, then yeah, not terrorism. But I feel like you don’t leave clues and messages without hoping to be the first of many.
He said in his notebook that he was sending a message. Sorry folks, that’s violence for a political aim, terrorism.
