Rage Against the Risk Pool: Luigi Mangione, Populism, and the Nihilism of Privilege

Luigi Mangione’s rise to infamy might seem, at first, like a tale of some sort of underdog rebellion—a David armed not with a sling but with a string of grievances, taking aim at the Goliath of modern institutions. This is, as much of the media is presenting the story and how many people frustrated with the cost of healthcare and personal grievances against the insurance industry have begun framing it. But dig deeper, and you find a story less about courage and more about despair and growing emptiness. Luigi did not emerge from the bleak shadows of deprivation but from the well-lit halls of privilege. He didn’t bear the scars of oppression but the ennui of unfulfilled ambition with soupcon of privlige.

Eric Hoffer, whose writings I now find as indispensable as my morning coffee in these populist times, astutely observed that revolutions are born not in hovels but in the restless hearts of those who have tasted comfort and found it insufficient. Mangione is their modern apostle, railing not against deprivation but against a system that, to his frustration, refused to elevate his grievances above its own survival.

What is fascinating—and troubling—about Mangione is not his defiance but the public’s embrace of it. His story is a prism through which we can examine two of society’s most destructive forces: the seductive nihilism of populism and the peculiar rage directed at insurance companies, those great, misunderstood gatekeepers of shared risk.

The Revolutionary as a Creature of Privilege

The left is fond of lionizing the “underdog”, and what we’ve been calling the “woke right” has become no stranger to playing the same game consistently. In either case, Luigi Mangione’s tale doesn’t quite fit the narrative. Born into wealth and surrounded by opportunity, he had no shortage of paths to meaning and purpose. But as Hoffer rightly pointed out, it is not deprivation that drives the revolutionary but discontent—a soul gnawed by the thought that the world owes it something more.

Mangione is the quintessential example of what happens when comfort curdles into the purest resentment. This is no proletarian uprising; it’s a tantrum of the privileged. He embodies the peculiar paradox of our age and inherent in the populist spirit: those who have the most seem increasingly the least grateful.

“Revolutionaries” like Mangione are not fueled by lack but by abundance. It is precisely because he had so much and found it wanting that he turned to the nihilistic embrace of destruction. In fact it might be because of a loss of something he once had that pushed him further into despair. Many reports have highlighted how he suffered from back problems, many a report is making that the driving cause of his madness, and why this stellar intellectual kid suddenly snapped at an unfair world. Add to all this, that he is presented as a man of his times, a time when institutions are not merely criticized but loathed, not merely questioned but dismantled in the imagination of the mob.

The Seduction of Populism

Populism, on both the left and right, thrives on a singular promise: everything you despise can be blamed on someone else. It flatters the common man by vilifying the “elite” (an ever-expanding category that now includes everyone from corporate executives to baristas who spell your name wrong). Everyone except the populists themselves.

Mangione’s story is a testament to the nihilistic turn of modern populism. His grievances are not specific; they are existential. They reflect a worldview that assumes every institution is corrupt, every rule rigged, and every societal structure a prison waiting to be demolished.

Populism is an easy sell because it asks nothing of its adherents except rage. It is the perfect intellectual cul-de-sac, a place where outrage masquerades as moral clarity, and slogans stand in for solutions. It is the ideological equivalent of smashing windows and calling it a renovation.

Vessels Without Anchors

As more comes to light about Luigi Mangione, I can’t help but notice some disconcerting parallels between his worldview and my own intellectual rabbit holes. The books he’s read—cataloged, for better or worse, on Goodreads—look all too familiar. They either sit on my own shelves or linger in memory as books I’ve digested and debated with myself. Mangione’s reported recent reading list mirrors my own in uncanny ways, though where I find purpose, he appears to have found despair. Even his Twitter posts about modern experts and intellectuals—those who bury their ideas in dense jargon to appear profound rather than accessible—echo a frustration I’ve often voiced that has lead many to revile any idea they don’t understand easily. If you really understand something, you should be able to explain it to anyone without sounding like you’ve swallowed a thesaurus. (Barring, of course, some genuine cognitive hiccups. I’m not unreasonable.)

Mangione’s reading list even includes Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto—yes, I’ve read it, too. Like Mangione, I have often found myself grappling with the unsettling logic within the madness. Kaczynski’s critique of modernity—the alienation, the loss of purpose—rings eerily true, reminding me of Nietzsche’s Last Man. This pitiable figure is the endpoint of modern progress: a creature who has traded ambition, struggle, and transcendence for the comforts of safety and mediocrity. There’s a kernel of truth here, a warning about what we lose when progress becomes an end in itself. But where I part ways with Mangione (and where he drifts dangerously close to Kaczynski) is in the anchor—or rather, his lack of one.

For Mangione, this critique of the modern world seems to—as it often does—have unraveled into a kind of revolutionary zeal, untethered from any constructive goal. His intellect, like Kaczynski’s—Ted, the brilliant mathematician, and Luigi, the computer Science major and App developer—seems to have turned inward, eating itself alive. Both men fell prey to the siren song of populist rhetoric, which offers simplistic explanations for life’s complexities. For Kaczynski, it was radical environmentalism. For Mangione, it seems rooted in personal grievances with the healthcare system and the broader mechanisms of modern life—systems he saw as within reach but perpetually slipping through his grasp.

The tragedy of both Mangione and Kaczynski is that their critiques, insightful as they may be, lacked the anchor of gratitude or a sense of preservation. Intelligence often brings with it the burden of overthinking and heightened awareness, which can lead to feelings of discontent or alienation. The antidote lies in gratitude—not just for the capacity to examine complex ideas, but for the privilege of being a small part of humanity’s vast, unfolding story of learning and growth. By stepping outside one’s personal struggles and viewing these complexities with joyful objectivity, one can embrace a sense of belonging in the larger tapestry of civilization, rather than falling into the trap of alienation or destructive impulses.

Where Mangione and Kaczynski saw enemies to be toppled, the rest of us can see traditions to be preserved. The conservative lens anchors, reminding that critiques of modernity are only useful when tied to the goal of safeguarding what is good and meaningful for future generations. Without this grounding, these critiques become abstract and untethered, spiraling into a void where despair masquerades as clarity and rebellion becomes its own justification. Also without this grounding, inherent brilliance becomes a corrosive force, turning inward and devouring itself until only nihilism remains.

For both men, their intelligence was tragically co-opted by their own discontent. Kaczynski and Mangione were not merely intelligent; they were incisive, technically gifted, and deeply insightful. Yet, lacking an anchor—a purpose to ground their intellect—their brilliance turned corrosive. Their frustrations became fuel for nihilistic quests for revolution, leaving destruction in their wake rather than renewal.

What they lacked was not intellectual capacity but a guiding compass, one that might have steered them away from rage and toward something worth preserving. Populist rhetoric, from both the left and right, offers a ready-made narrative for such individuals, framing them as instruments of change for collective grievances. For both men, isolation—both physical and psychological—played a critical role, amplifying their susceptibility to these narratives.

The rhetoric they consumed and extolled provided a sense of belonging, allowing them to see themselves as champions of the masses’ discontent. In this way, they found warmth not in genuine connection or purpose, but in the destructive fervor of populist fury, mistaking the heat of rebellion for the light of meaningful progress.

Insurance and the Misunderstood Villain