Image above from TRT World
There is no stopping the social trend that Luigi Mangione represents, because he’s the kind of person who emerges in a situation of tremendous class-based injustice. This is something we need to understand about the conditions we’re now in: it’s inevitable that these conditions will produce a wave of political unrest, comparable to the “Years of Lead” which happened in Italy from the 1960s to the 80s. And though communists can’t adopt the adventurist tactics that this trend represents, we also must recognize why so many of the people have sided with Luigi, one of the trend’s first initiators. And we need to translate this popular sentiment into workers struggle, which can only be done when we grasp what the masses are looking for.
They aren’t hoping for civil conflict; rather they’re hoping to stop the violence that the ruling class is committing against them. That’s what communists have to offer the people as our social order breaks down, and incidents like Luigi’s act accelerate the system’s dissolution.
Over one in four Americans say they support Luigi. Which isn’t a majority, but it does represent a trend in mass consciousness, one that’s more than big enough to change the direction of history. If these many of the people are sympathetic enough to Luigi that they would openly express this, then there would absolutely be enough popular support for an effort to overthrow the capitalist state. The elites know this, which is why they’re working to preempt such a revolt by instigating violence that serves their own interests. They want to make the American years of lead include massive amounts of right-wing terrorism, violent crime, and false flags that get blamed on foreign powers.
There are theories about the killing of Brian Thompson having been a false flag, or about Luigi having not really been the culprit; but if that were true, Luigi’s case wouldn’t be so public. Luigi caught the ruling class by surprise, and the cultural shift he helped create is something the system now needs to manage; it’s shown how advanced the USA’s people are, and forced the oligarchs to go on the defensive. With Luigi, there aren’t any of the warning signs of federal manipulation that we’ve seen in other cases.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who almost shot Trump, had been communicating through encrypted platforms during his mental health spiral; the feds also did everything they could to hide information about him, which they didn’t do with Luigi. Undercover FBI agents regularly form relationships with psychologically vulnerable people in order to set them up for terrorist plots, which means it would make perfect sense if they were manipulating Crooks. But with Luigi, all the signs point to him having been self-motivated; and self-motivated in a way that aligned with the desires of much of the working class.
There’s a reason why so many people have connected with him, whereas every nihilistic shooter or far-right terrorist is hated by the vast majority of the people. The workers relate to Luigi’s yearning for justice, so they’ve in large part cheered him on. Crowds have gathered to advocate for him being freed, and their demonstrations have taken on the aesthetics of a political movement; this is what it looks like when a proletariat that’s looking for revolutionary leadership has found a face to rally around.
Communists must recognize the mass revolutionary consciousness that Luigi has revealed, and lead the people towards the next phase in the class revolt. All U.S. communists should have responded in this way to the rise of MAGA, or the Bernie Sanders movement, or any of the other trends where Americans have been drawn towards a source of hope. Many Marxists did this with the Sanders movement, but at the same time they joined with the Democrats in ostracizing MAGA; it was only later when the MAGA communism synthesis emerged, and many came to truly understand what it means to reach the masses. It’s this lesson that’s equipped us to take advantage of the pro-Luigi sentiment.
This is a consciousness shift that’s different from what happened with MAGA, or with the 2016 Sanders campaign. In those cases, the figures leading the shift revealed their true nature as tools of the establishment, and large parts of their support bases became alienated. This is beneficial to the revolutionary cause, because it’s left many disillusioned people who can be brought into the class struggle; but it’s also come with a cost. When somebody leaves a cause that they believed represents hope, they often become burnt out or hopeless, and revolutionary agitators need to bring them out of that state. With the trend that Luigi represents, this won’t happen. The movement’s central figure can’t fail, meaning the movement will simply keep building off the event which initiated it. The trend can only continue to gain more momentum over time, and its driving idea of class revolt can only grow more popular.
If many of the people have already come to an advanced consciousness on class war, and this consciousness is sure to keep proliferating, then the question is what form these popular beliefs will take on next. There’s a widespread awareness that our ruling class is inflicting violence on us; where’s this awareness going to lead? The system’s narrative managers hope it will lead to division, atomization, and paranoia. That’s why there’s an effort to instigate far-right terrorism and nihilistic violence: the rulers want to steer America’s years of lead in a direction which undermines revolutionary progress.
Communists need to show ourselves as defenders against this project to collapse our society. Our role is not to start violence, but to end it. And we must recognize that this is the same idea which drives Luigi’s supporters. They’re not people who simply love the idea of violence; they’re looking for a way to stop the violence that the system subjects us to. Despite the efforts of the ruling class media to vilify these people as perverse violence-lovers, the true nature of their motives and beliefs is widely understood. Because even if most Americans won’t call themselves Luigi supporters, it’s not hard to see the reasoning of those who do.
The discourse around this issue is only getting started, because our ruling class has made it inevitable that more of the people will adopt these attitudes. And within this discourse, communists must take on an active role. We have to lead the pro-Luigi side to the next stage in consciousness; a stage where these masses have been able to find collective workers organization, which is how they can win the class war. We can become leaders of the workers, but only if we show we truly respect them, and share their desire for bringing the violence to an end.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures amid late-stage capitalism, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
