The American right performed an interesting tap dance last week: condemning the left for cheering an alleged murderer and turning another into a right-wing celebrity.
In the first case, healthcare CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione, right terrified By the (admittedly terrifying) celebration at a certain angle to the left. “It’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him,” President-elect Donald Trump Dr. at a press conference on Monday.
Second killer- Daniel PenneyWho choked homeless man Jordan Neely on the New York subway – has become the subject Much right-wing praise. after that Acquitted of genocide charges last weekVice President-elect JD Vance invited him Attending the Army-Navy football game with Trump.
This contrast was everywhere, both among Republican electorates and right-leaning scholars (as shown in a mirror image discourse among Mangione supporters on the left).
Incoming House GOP member Brandon Gill, who aired criticism of liberals on Twitter for lionizing Mangione, In a speech on Sunday, Dr that “we need a lot more Daniel Pennies in this country because we have a lot more Jordan Neely.” Barry Weiss, whose Free Press publication issued an editorial call The idea of judging Penny unfairlywent on Fox News Declaring that “you can’t have a functioning liberal democracy like ours and accept that some people are allowed to be killed on the streets of Manhattan.”
There is no discernible difference in the response to the two murders A viral clip of Fox News host Laura IngrahamIn which he said:
People are celebrating [Mangione]? It’s a sickness – honestly, so depressing, but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Gentlemen, thank you very much.
Next up, other big news out of New York: Daniel Penney. Many consider him a hero.
To many on the left this may seem pure hypocrisy. But I think it’s too easy. Not only does it skate over some obvious differences between the two situations, it also fails to grapple with the deep ideological differences between right-wing and left-wing approaches to these issues.
The concept of “order” plays a central role in conservative thought, in a way that liberals and leftists often have trouble accounting for. Once you understand the nature of the right’s philosophical commitment to order, it’s easy to see why they find no hypocrisy in their treatment of Mangione and Penny—even if one might fairly question whether the right is letting itself off the hook too easily.
Order and violence
While reporting this piece, I looked at the available footage of the two incidents in question. And it’s clear that they are very, very different situations.
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was a cold-blooded murder; Multiple shots in the back with no prior conflict and no indication that Thompson posed an immediate physical threat to anyone. It was a simple, deliberate and premeditated murder.
Neely’s situation is different: some passengers on the train said he was threatening to hurt someone, even though he actually didn’t. Penny claims she restrained Neely to protect the other passengers.
In reality, it is highly questionable whether choking Neely for six straight minutes is a reasonable response to mere verbal aggression. Even Penny’s defense team implicitly acknowledged that death was not an appropriate punishment, both of her attorneys argued that Penny didn’t want to kill Neely And Technically there may not be.
But conservatives aren’t just arguing that Penny shouldn’t be convicted. They are celebrating him as one Nayak is mirroring the left who see the annihilation of human life on the streets of New York as a political victory.
So why? How can they condemn the left’s choice to lionize the (alleged) killer on the one hand while doing the same to their likes?
In National Review, cultural critic Christian Schneider He took this challenge in mind. His argument proceeds by comic book analogies, comparing Mangione to the Joker and Penny to Batman.
Mangione “probably killed a man in cold blood as a show to play with law enforcement. It’s straight out of the Joker’s antihero playbook, where he earns the respect of like-minded citizens while wreaking havoc,” Snyder wrote.
Penny, “doing a random job of public safety” and being reviled for it, begins to reverse “the most basic superhero origin narrative: a man looks around, sees that the justice system can’t handle the crime rampant on the streets, and takes action on his own. “
Snyder’s language may be simplistic, but he has his finger on the pulse of conservative approaches to these issues. Conservatism is, after all, a philosophy of discipline. Indeed, the emphasis on mandate value is something that unites the entire conservative coalition — from Trump to the centrist squish of the GOP.
When Russell Kirk, a defining voice of 20th-century conservatism, Made a list of 10 conservative principlesHe put it first: “Conservatives believe that there is an enduring moral order. This order is made for man, and man is made for him: human nature is a constant, and moral truth is permanent.” Much of his list contains an elaboration of this principle: what is the “permanent moral order,” how it affects the health of a political community. gives shape and an account of how it can be judiciously adjusted over time.
For Kirk the moral order is a social norm developed collectively by a society over centuries – more like common sense than abstractly reasoned principles. It is enforced both by law and custom; Without it, we risk wholesale social collapse. “If the old institutional and moral safeguards of a nation are neglected, the anarchic impulses are unleashed in mankind,” he wrote.
Based on this conservative understanding, the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare is an example of “anarchic persuasion”: someone violating a time-honored principle of addressing political concerns through the ballot box rather than the bullet. It represents an individual attacking the system we have collectively decided upon
In contrast, the killing of Jordan Neely represents a defense The moral discipline of the conservative mind. Fighting and threatening train passengers, Neely became a force of chaos and disruption. If the state cannot intervene to maintain moral order against someone like Penny, citizens will eventually be forced to act.
“When liberals destroy [the] Rule of law, heroes like Daniel Penny prevent violent thugs from terrorizing innocent citizens. He should be celebrated,” Gill, the incoming congressman from Texas, said. writes on X/Twitter.
To leftists and liberals, this argument sounds a lot like hierarchy justification—a fancy way of saying that people at the top of the social order deserve more rights and protections, no matter how much harm they do. It amounts to a proof Frank Wilhoit’s Criticism That “conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be a group to whom the law protects but does not bind, as well as an outside group to whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Moreover, the alleged defense of order can become a justification for its own kind disThe Order Daniel Penney isn’t just a one-off: there is A long and troubling history Conservatives advocating vigilante killings of “the right kind” of people, including fairly recent examples including Kyle Rittenhouse and George Zimmerman. To conservative defensive people, the “good guys with guns” are part of Why America As such there is a serious violent crime problem in the first place
Ultimately, though, I think this conversation is very necessary. It does no good for democracy to have rival parties – left, right or otherwise – celebrating alleged murderers, trying to score political points with pamphlets written in blood. And the more we as a society normalize this gladiatorial ethos, the greater the risk of a repeat of this horror.
