Jan Moir: Women fawning over ‘hot assassin’ Luigi Mangione prove they’re the problem

You have to wonder where the world is going when an alleged assassin is celebrated – even deified – because he just happens to be, in the eyes of many, handsome and desirable.

Luigi Mangione has been arrested in connection with the murder of CEO executive Brian Thompson, who was shot down in cold blood on the streets of Manhattan. You’d think Luigi had just released a hit song or had triumphed playing Bob Dylan or a hunky gladiator in a new Hollywood film, instead of shooting a man in the back and running away.

Thompson was the boss of UnitedHealthcare, a firm of US health insurers who had come under increasing criticism for denying medical care to clients making claims on their policies.

This has been enough reason for many social media users in America and elsewhere to glorify his death and claim that 26-yearold Mangione is some kind of modern-day Robin Hood, a folk hero for killing a stranger.

To Mangione and his doting disciples, Thompson represented a sick and corroded scheme that has ill served the poorer sections of American society for decades – but was that his fault?

Thompson is a father of two who didn’t invent the US healthcare system and who was pronounced dead 27 minutes after Mangione allegedly shot him. Did he really deserve such a lonely and brutal death? Does anyone?

It is noticeable and sad that there has been scant sympathy for him – and little compassion for his bereaved family and fatherless children.

Instead, a chorus of lovestruck halfwits gurgle on about Mangione’s ‘ripped abs’ and ‘flirty smile’, while chat-show hosts make jokes about ‘the hottest cold-blooded killer in America today’ (Jimmy Kimmel) and giggling young women in New York put themselves forward for jury duty at his trial.

It makes me feel sick.

It makes me fear for humanity – and the fate of an increasingly shallow society where justice is measured by how cute and attractive the accused just happens to be. And if his victim so happens to be a symbol of unloved corporate America, then so much the better.

Where were the I-Love-Luigi mob when a putative assassin shot Donald Trump in Pennsylvania back in July? Surely here was another folk hero; another little guy trying to stick it to the big guy on behalf of the disenfranchised and the overlooked?

Oh, no wait. Hang on a minute.

The Trump shooter – bespectacled, nerdy, chinless, ab-free Thomas Matthew Crooks – was no one’s idea of a pin-up. So he died uncelebrated and little adored, killed by Secret Service marksmen, a pimply nobody instead of a worshipped martyr.

And perhaps we should count our grisly blessings that notorious American serial killer Ted Bundy is long dead, executed by the state in 1989 for the rape and murder of at least 30 women.

The depraved maniac even decapitated some of his victims and took their heads back to his apartment as trophies, but one shudders to think how the TikTok generation would have still found a way to lionise the handsome killer.

Just look at the reaction to Wade Wilson, the barking-mad Florida murderer who was found guilty earlier this year of strangling two women to death just for ‘the sake of killing’.

In the days immediately following his trial, the heavily tattooed Wilson received 754 photos and 65 letters in the post, a quarter of which were censored by the sheriff ’s office for their ‘inappropriate nature’ – nudes, in other words. Dear God.

He also received nearly 4000 supportive messages online, mostly from women who found him attractive. Who are these deluded she-fans, revering a man who has slain women for fun? They make turkeys voting for Christmas seem like superior rational beings.

The worship of Luigi Mangione is slightly different, in that not only do his followers blindly support this troubled misfit, but they have also added an element of gloat to the death of an innocent man. And that is unforgivable.

What really gets me is the skindeep frivolity of it all, along with the trivialisation of a serious crime and the fact that everything, even murder, is seen an entertainment these days.

TikTok influencers have been dressing up as Mangione, look alike contests have been held in New York, mocking videos have been made and fan clubs started.

The grave issues that this incident raise have been overlooked in the nauseating stampede to salivate over the killer’s Italian stallion good looks and Insta-reputation as some misbegotten Robin Hood.

However, there is another narrative, if you care to think about it. Which is that Mangione is the spoiled, rich scion of a fabulously wealthy Baltimore family; an elite son who went to private school, an Ivy League university and at some stage could have used his inherited millions to do good in the world.

Instead, his life took a very dark turn, culminating in the shooting of Brian Thompson, the son of a labourer who went to a state university and spent the next 20 years working his way up the ladder of corporate America.

That’s another storyline, but it’s not the one that Luigi lovers want to hear right now. Shame on them.