Every sign points to Luigi Mangione being innocent, and to Brian Thompson’s slaying having been done by a team. I’m not even talking about the idea that Luigi was left-handed, which is a rumor that’s contradicted by other evidence; to figure out that Luigi was not the perpetrator, you can actually look at numerous other factors surrounding the shooting. These reasons for doubt have already been listed by other observers; there’s Luigi’s consistent denials of guilt even though he’d supposedly written a grand confession, there’s the official story’s absolutely absurd claim that Luigi didn’t think to get rid of the murder weapon, there’s the implausibly easy time that law enforcement had in finding the supposed McDonald’s informant on Luigi.
The holes in the case against him go on and on, and the only logical conclusion is that the deed was done by multiple individuals working in coordination. Which begs the question: was this team carrying out a false flag operation for the deep state, or could they have done this of their own volition? Moreover, if this was an event that caught the ruling class off guard, in what ways have they scrambled to put a lid on the ensuing fallout?
It may be that the attempt at making Luigi into the killer was a way of not just finding a fall guy, but hiding the presence of a revolutionary force that’s already far ahead of the state’s counterinsurgency apparatus. The ones behind Epstein’s network had a plan for when the public backlash against their crimes became larger: release the Epstein files in a strategic fashion, and thereby further normalize these evils. But what was the Epstein class to do in response towards a backlash which could successfully evade its detection?
A team is the only logical explanation for the Thompson saying both because this operation was far too elaborate for one person to pull off; and because practically every time U.S. law enforcement has sought to pin a high-profile murder charge on an innocent person, it has been to cover up the presence of a hidden crew. This was the reality behind the bulk of the 20th century’s “serial killer” cases, as detailed in David McGowan’s Programmed to Kill: typically when Americans would hear about a string of murders, and see the face of the individual the police said was behind them, law enforcement would be pulling off a ruse using the same deceptive tactics they’ve employed with Luigi. And the nature of these murders was usually one which suggested a collaborative effort. Even when one of these iconic serial killers had actually taken part in the crimes, like Bundy or Kemper, they wouldn’t have been able to do it without help—with law enforcement often playing a critical role in this assistance.
The difference with the Brian Thompson case, though, is that we can’t definitively say Thompson was slain by individuals who were working on behalf of the American deep state, or even on behalf of a smaller faction within the capitalist ruling class. This is because their deed has had the effect of galvanizing working-class struggle at a moment when America’s people are severely disorganized, and desperately in need of an idea which can unite them in resistance. The Luigi movement has become the biggest source of hope that America’s people can change the balance of power, and defeat a ruling class that’s been empowered to wage unrestrained war against the world’s democratic masses. The only way our class enemies could have orchestrated a plot to kill Thompson was if they had completely failed to anticipate these developments which his death would bring. Which isn’t completely implausible. And yet…
There are too many reasons to doubt that the Thompson shooting was a false flag, and to believe instead that it was the product of forces within the working-class movement which we don’t know about. Forces that have figured out how to operate clandestinely, how to use the tools of the criminal underworld, how to evade capture after they’ve carried out an operation, and how to spark critical catalysts within the class war through calculated maneuvers. I cannot make a definitive call that this is true, because we don’t yet have access to enough of the real story. What we can do is investigate the criminal world, the underworld that our class enemies have created, and discern how this world can produce forces which haunt those at the top of today’s global power structure.
The biggest example of this “illicit networks fueling revolutions” phenomenon, and one which makes it a lot more believable that a renegade group killed Brian Thompson, is the popular movement that’s transforming Haiti right now. This is a movement that became so strong because Haiti had become extremely “lumpenized,” with its population being pushed into subsisting off of means outside the proletarian lifestyle. This made the gangs as powerful as they are, and when a leader like Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier managed to unify these gangs, they took on the role of a fighting force against the neo-colonial regime.
The movement’s armed groups have a war machine that runs off of the weaponry which U.S. imperialism produces; they wouldn’t have nearly as many of the resources they do without the weapons smuggling networks that ship from the U.S. to the Caribbean. They are, very directly and on a mass scale, using the tools of the enemy to defeat the enemy. A scenario like this could only have come into being after global finance capital had lumpenized so much of the world, the anti-imperialist movements could raise entire armies out of the lumpenized masses. It is rotten-ripe imperialism giving way to a new world, a world where the financiers are no longer truly in control.
It is indeed quite plausible that this process has played out within the USA, to the extent that it’s produced the kind of network which would be required for carrying out the Thompson slaying. Even if this isn’t the explanation for the Thompson murder itself, there is no telling what kinds of developments will ripple out from that event (we’ve already seen it inspire another attack against a CEO). Our increasingly chaotic conditions are going to manifest all kinds of adventurist actions, including actions that succeed at rallying the masses despite them being adventurist. And to understand how working-class organizers should navigate these “Years of Lead,” we need to study the historical trends behind these kinds of adventurism.
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In response to Italy’s Years of Lead, and the revival of fascist repression that correlated with it, the Red Brigades concluded that proletarian organizations had to find the holes in the mechanisms of power. I include this passage not because I think we should copy the model of the Red Brigades (in fact I’ll include a quoted critique of their approach right after), but to understand the thought process that they articulated. The Brigades called for
winning within the movement new terrains for confrontation, where armed struggle is measured against a tactical program which, built directly on the conditions of life of the proletariat, brings the conflict for power into view at every moment of the struggle. The only possible and practical response must take form in direct relation to the immediate objectives. If every proletarian struggle comes immediately face to face with this major project of militarization or control of all society, it becomes necessary to discover in every weakness of the system of oppression all the mechanisms of this system itself, to direct against this system the mobilized masses, and to organize the armed resistance at that point.
If at every step of its life the proletariat encounters the monstrous machinery of power which has its pivot in the Christian Democratic Party (DC), it becomes necessary to start with the powerful proletarian movement already developed, and to reinforce, organize and direct a practice of struggle which will disrupt every gear in this machine. We have said REINFORCE, ORGANIZE, DIRECT THE MASS ORGANISMS OF PROLETARIAN POWER: this does not mean creating them at that point. Such organisms must be made up of the masses, represent real class strata, must contain ALL the proletarians ready for revolutionary struggle, ALL the possibility of the Movement of Resistance. There must be no distinction between Combatant Party (PCC) and Mass Organisms of Proletarian Power; on the contrary, in this new situation, the PCC must give active leadership to the movement, but without supervision or constraints, without putting ourselves either above or below, being inside. This is the task that the vanguard must now resolve, that the Party must carry out. And it must be done today in order to develop the offensive Movement of Resistance, to render it stronger, to construct proletarian power.
According to Ken Lawrence, “Part of the problem with these groups [like the Red Brigades] is their one-sided understanding of reformism. While it is true that reformism is the bourgeoisie's carrot and repression is its stick, that is not the whole story, nor even the most important part. Reformism is the aspect of capital that the working class has internalized. It is an alien class ideology, yes, but it is precisely because it has been internalized, and represents a pole within the proletariat's consciousness, that it constitutes such an effective tool of bourgeois hegemony, and one that armed struggle alone will not dislodge.”
It’s an idealism that attempts to substitute armed struggle for mass struggle, and we must grasp why it’s idealist in order to properly respond to our own Years of Lead. Regarding Brian Thompson, however, we should recognize that the political dynamic we saw play out was not the same as this lazy fetishization of armed action. This is because the action in question was one which successfully roused the masses towards collective struggle; it brought us closer to seizure of power by the workers, rather than setting back this goal. This is why it’s so hard to accept that the incident was a false flag, and why if it was done by an organic group, this group represented a practice that truly embodies the mission which orgs like the Red Brigades have failed to live up to. These groups have put forth bold rhetoric about galvanizing the masses, but really given up on the mass struggle in favor of adventurism; to make such rhetoric have meaning, you need to forsake all bluster, and only act strategically.
There is a difference between this calculated practice, and the practice of the ultraviolent actors who make up the ranks of today’s “antifa” groups. Antifa is following in the tradition of Russia’s Narodniks, who pursued action for its own sake and disregarded the need to build a mass movement. The working-class masses and organizers who’ve aligned themselves with the Luigi movement represent a different mindset. A mindset that’s not simply about lashing out, like the ultra-left Narodniks do, but about waging the class war in a serious way.
The ultra-lefts claim they’re fighting for the workers, but this claim is completely hollow, and very often you find sentiments from ultra-leftists that are outwardly anti-worker anyhow. The difference between how antifa thinks, and how the pro-Luigi working-class forces think, is that antifa exists to serve petty-bourgeois and lumpen impulses. Someone who’s genuinely working-class in their thinking does not share an obsession with libidinal release for its own sake; this is the trait of a selfish “radical” who’s detached from the cause of the proletariat. The proletariat does not benefit from mindless destruction, which is why the overwhelming majority of the people who lack any sympathy for Brian Thompson are not motivated by the ultra-left mentality. They aren’t bloodthirsty, they’re looking for justice. Justice on behalf of the countless working people who are subjected to the violence that parasites like Brian Thompson perpetuate every day.
This is not an endorsement of voluntarism, the Narodnik-adjacent ideology which preaches that elite warriors can will revolution into being through sheer drastic action. It’s also not an endorsement of adventurism in general; as a communist, my organizational model is incompatible with any act that goes ahead of the masses. The position I’m taking is that there’s nothing we can do to stop America’s Years of Lead, and therefore we must learn to navigate the conditions which come from this. We have to take the positions that will earn us trust from the masses as they react towards Luigi-type events, making it clear that we’re on the side of the people against the repressive state. Getting behind the Free Luigi movement is how we fulfill this part of the task. The task’s other aspect, beyond responding to these developments as they spontaneously occur, is the aspect in which we actively make history.
We know what it looks like when lumpen and petty-bourgeois elements chase the illusion of making history. It looks like the honeypot which is “antifa,” where activists are lured into above-ground illegal behaviors. This kind of ultra-leftism is a growing problem right now. But if we truly understand which historical force the Luigi movement represents, we’ll be able to avoid the traps being set by the Narodniks, while forging a real path forward for the proletarian struggle.
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Another ultra-left idea that we need to combat in order to correctly respond to the Luigi movement is the notion of the criminal gangs, in themselves, being viable revolutionary vehicles. Haiti’s popular movement has successfully brought its country’s gangs into the struggle, but the conditions in the United States may not be compatible with this particular practice. The only way we’ll find out for sure which tactics or alliances will work is by letting America live out its own revolutionary struggle.
In just these last couple of years, this struggle has developed enough that we’ve found certainty on many things which had been a mystery. Things like whether the masses could be spurred into action even during an organizationally bleak time. The Luigi movement has proven that such odds can be beaten. This is critical for us to keep in mind now that our class enemies have further advanced their schemes, and used the Epstein files as a way of desensitizing the world to their crimes. They’ve carried out this psyop because they believe the mass backlash will be ineffective. They don’t expect the outrage to galvanize the class struggle, they expect it to turn into numbness. Which is extremely useful as Washington intensifies the extermination of Gaza, bombs more countries, and wages war on Iran. This series of maneuvers by our enemies has been very effective. And yet…
If it was an independent group that did the deed Luigi is accused of, then this was a group which came into being without any help from American leftism. The U.S. left was neutralized a long time ago, at least since the end of the 1970s; and therefore the country hasn’t had a true left throughout this time. Yet like a phantom, America’s forces of popular working-class resistance reappeared in December 2024, and set off a historical chain reaction that’s just begun to play out.
This is the nature of a revolutionary movement in the absence of working-class institutions that are readily available to the people. As popular pressure against the ruling order intensifies, and the state tries to crush any attempt at building an above-ground proletarian force, this pressure will come out through different avenues. Of these things we can be certain. There are many forces within today’s activism spaces that seek to divert the growing passions towards dangerously reckless endeavors, and manipulate us into taking actions that will only doom us. In this game, there are countless tactics somebody can use for such manipulation. To discern who can be trusted, pay attention to whether a person or org has based their ideas within the actual history of revolutionary struggle; whether they’re taking into account the lessons from adventurist or idealist errors, and only taking any action after serious consideration of what will come from this action.
This is the most important advice one must internalize if they’re seriously interested in entering the world of militancy, and you can only truly absorb such wisdom through personal experience. Platforms like this one can only provide warnings about the pitfalls; there’s no simple guide to resisting adventurist manipulation. I have taken such a foreboding tone because the alternative would be to propagate the same mindlessly brazen, ultra-left rhetoric which I’ve warned about. When you are so much as talking about something like the Brian Thompson incident, the only safe option is to treat it with this kind of seriousness; and still, this is only “safe” insofar as it can prevent us from engaging in foolishness. The feds are going to try to frame the movement’s members no matter how well we conduct ourselves.
When you are willing to commit to such seriousness, though, you’ll find that you won’t become knocked off of the revolutionary path that you’ve started upon. Your organization will survive and continue to make gains, even if you or others are targeted by the state. The ultra-left wreckers seek to tempt us away from this path by offering shallow libidinal release. Through iron discipline, historical study, and the intelligence to constantly monitor what the conditions call for, we will be able to resist such temptations and bring our cause forward.
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