The name of Luigi Mangione has come up often over the past few days in social media users’ discussions of the fires ravaging Southern California.
Many, angered by State Farm’s decision last summer to cancel hundreds of homeowners policies in some of the neighborhoods now devastated by the blazes, are looking at the 26-year-old as the type of avenger they wish would punish insurance companies that have cut coverage across the state.
Newsweek contacted State Farm for comment by email on Friday morning.
Why It Matters
The murder of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive Brian Thompson on December 4, and the online adulation of Mangione that followed it revealed the depth of Americans’ anger against health insurance companies in the country.
Mangione, whose appearance has been lionized on social media, has been made into something of a questionable folk hero, with people online hailing him as a symbol of justified violence against the perceived predatory behavior of insurance companies operating in the U.S. healthcare system.
His resurfacing now in the context of the widespread outrage that reports of State Farm’s and other insurers’ cancellations and non-renewals in California have sparked online would suggest that the U.S. property insurance sector might soon become the subject of a heated public debate.
What To Know
Several major insurers operating in California have cut coverages since 2022, especially in the most at-risk zones.
State Farm, the Golden State’s largest home insurer, canceled 72,000 policies in the state by the summer, 30,000 of which were homes. In Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood that was devastated by the Palisades fire which started on Tuesday morning and was only 6 percent contained as of Friday morning, State Farm canceled 1,626 policies.
The company cited increasing costs and catastrophe exposure as the main reason behind a decision they were “reluctant” to take, saying it was necessary to maintain claims-paying capacity for their California customers. Last year, State Farm requested a 30 percent rate hike for its homeowners line, a 52 percent rate hike for renters and a 36 percent rate hike for condo owners in the Golden State to match the growing wildfire risk.
Premium increases in the state must be approved by the California Department of Insurance (CDI), a requirement meant to protect homeowners from sudden massive hikes.
But State Farm’s decision, though justified by the company’s commitment to maintain coverage for some policyholders, left many homeowners in the state scrambling to find insurance at a time when it’s become increasingly difficult—and expensive.
In a comment to Newsweek earlier this week, a spokesperson for State Farm said: “Our number one priority right now is the safety of our customers, agents and employees impacted by the fires and assisting our customers in the midst of this tragedy.”
Seeking the ‘Luigi Mangione Way’
State Farm’s move last summer has sparked a lot of anger since the outbreak of the fires this week.
“The fact that State Farm removed their fire policies for certain zip codes in California weeks or months before the fire hit is unbelievable,” wrote content creator @stoppfeenin on X, where he has more than 108.5k followers. “People are left without means to rebuild or any access to financial support. I understand Luigi Mangione now.”
“Who is the CEO of State Farm?” wrote another user on the social media platform, sharing a photo of Mangione.
“State Farm cancelled thousands of CA insurance policies before the fires?? Palisades and other homeowners must seek the Luigi Mangione way,” an X user wrote on the platform, sharing an image of Batman and Mangione’s face.
“Major insurance companies dropped thousands of California residents prior to devastating fires” pic.twitter.com/VMIxT8DpnJ
— kayla (@xsugarfoxx) January 9, 2025
An anti-insurance folk hero
“The fires in the Los Angeles area are devastating. We still do not know the full magnitude of destruction, specifically loss of life and property, and it will be some time before we know the full extent,” Dr. Julianna Kirschner, lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, told Newsweek.
“With the understandable confusion and anxiety people are experiencing, many users are spending time on social media to share or gather information and comment on the fires,” she added.
While Mangione “has remained a consistent figure in memes and other viral content” since December, Kirschner said, in recent days, his image has been associated with user messaging about the fires.
“Mangione has become a figurehead in online discourse about insurance companies, which has now extended from the context of healthcare to home and renter insurance,” she explained.
“Some California residents have had trouble getting insurance coverage in recent years, and many of those living in fire prone areas have limited to no options. Users on platforms like X have been commenting on this state of affairs, and the most common theme of these posts have expressed anger against insurance companies and their practices in California,” Kirschner said.
“Mangione’s image has been a consistent visual form of communicating that message.”
According to Kirschner, Mangione’s image “is so highly intertwined with anti-insurance sentiment that he has become a folk hero on social media platforms, because users align with Mangione’s known distaste for insurance companies and their tendency to deny claims.”
For certain communities on social media, Kirschner said, Mangione has become a familiar image, “a protector of sorts.”
Some people on social media are canonizing Luigi Mangione as “Saint Luigi.”Below are examples of the iconographic images being used. (I’ve seen these images on TikTok, Instagram, and this platform.) pic.twitter.com/nDIyFGuZa2
— leahmcelrath.bsky.social (@leahmcelrath) December 13, 2024
“His face has been photoshopped on religious iconography, so the deification of him online is not a stretch. In fact, Mangione has become so representative of anti-insurance rhetoric that users need not include written commentary anymore when posting a Mangione image or meme. The image communicates the sentiment all on its own, and many users have posted this way in recent days,” she explained.
What People Are Saying
Dr. Cliff Lampe, professor of information and associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek: “With the Mangione posts, we’re seeing a form of publishing related to a broader societal dissatisfaction with the status quo.
“With both increased income inequality and at least a perceived sense of lack of agency around corporate power, people turn to social media expression to vent and engage in a flexible dialog about societal issues. Through darkly humorous posts, expressions of admiration, sarcasm and other forms of rhetoric, people are rebuilding a sense of agency by reacting to their personal audiences.”
Susan Campbell, distinguished lecturer in the Department of Communications, Film, and Media Studies at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of New Haven, told Newsweek: “People like Luigi Mangione become folk heroes when people feel powerless against systems they feel have failed them. The health insurance industry has let so many people down, and then up steps this young man to shoot one of the industry’s leaders.
“Life is more complicated than that, but we only seem to see that in retrospect. Bonnie & Clyde reached folk-hero status because they looked like winners at a time when everyone else was losing—at least financially. No amount of slavishly positive media coverage could change that at their heart, they were nothing more than bank robbers who killed people. The same goes with the James gang, other folk heroes from a long-ago.”
As of Friday morning, the Palisades fire, which has burned through about 20,000 acres, was 8 percent contained; the Eaton fire, which has expanded across 13,000 acres, was out of control; the Kenneth fire, which has covered 1,000 acres, was 35 percent contained; the Hurst fire, which has moved through 800 acres, was 37 percent contained; and the Lidia fire, which has burned through 400 acres, was 75 percent contained.
Estimates of the economic loss caused by the fire are already in the tens of billions—but the full extent of the damages will only be clear after all fires have been contained.
What’s Next
According to Kirschner, the anger users have been communicating on platforms like X by using the image of Mangione or citing his name “will only continue to rise as information about the loss of life and property damage becomes available.”
Lampe, on the other hand, thinks that no real action will follow the sharing of Mangione memes online. “One of the issues with this type of online expression is whether it coalesces into any other form of action, either collective or personal,” he said.
“Over the past twenty years, we have seen posts like this turn into different types of protests—as seen with Occupy Wall Street 15 years ago, or BLM 5 years ago. However, more often we see the venting never materialize into any other form of action and simply stay as a type of online venting,” Lampe explained.
Campbell thinks that, in the end, while angry moments citing Mangione may express the frustration Americans really feel at the way insurance companies work, this is not the way to create change.
“So many of our systems are broken right now, but in the end—not to get preachy here—our energy would better be served working to take power back from the systems we feel have failed us, not holding up people who break the law as some kind of role model or hero,” she said.
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