Most Americans are alarmed by the recent rise in political violence, but Broadway appears to be entertained by it.
New York City’s theater hub is set to give 28-year-old alleged killer Luigi Mangione the star treatment in a satirical musical that premieres in Manhattan in June. “Luigi: The Musical” will run at a theater just miles from where Mangione allegedly gunned down a father of two in broad daylight, execution-style.
The location choice, like the timing of the show’s Big Apple debut, certainly seems to be deliberate. Opening night is June 15, a week after Mangione’s state trial was supposed to begin, until a New York judge delayed that trial until this fall.
But the show will go on regardless and will likely sell out, if its brief run in San Francisco last year was any indication. All five of the show’s performances in June 2025 — just six months after Mangione allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — sold out and were met with standing ovations, according to reports.
The show’s creators have insisted “Luigi: The Musical” is a comedy and that it’s not intended to trivialize the seriousness of Mangione’s alleged crimes — or the crimes of Sean “Diddy” Combs and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who are also depicted in the musical with Mangione in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.
Except, in the case of Mangione, that’s exactly what it does. The entire point of the show, according to one of its own co-writers, is to expose the “big pillars of institutions in society,” including the healthcare industry, “that are failing in their trust.” Throughout the show, Mangione’s character uses these failings to justify his actions, even at one point calling himself a “martyr.”
“Bringing down a tiny part of our broken healthcare system brings me enough happiness to share!” the stage version of Luigi reportedly sings, warning that he’ll kill any other CEO he considers to be an obstacle to progress.
Now, unlike the musical’s creators, I don’t think people are stupid. It’s pretty obvious they’re lining up to see “Luigi: The Musical” for the same reason its writers were able to produce it in under two months: because they agree with the underlying reasons that Mangione has claimed drove him to allegedly shoot a man in the back, and are sympathetic to him because of it. And whether they’ll admit it or not, the effect is to make radicalization seem ordinary — even understandable.
NEARLY 40% OF YOUNG AMERICANS SAY POLITICAL VIOLENCE CAN BE JUSTIFIED IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS
Unfortunately, my generation, Gen Z, appears to be leading the effort to mainstream this kind of extremism. Young adults my age are alarmingly open to the use of political violence, with 41% of 18- to 29-year-olds saying in a 2024 poll that they agree it is “somewhat” or “completely” acceptable to kill a CEO, as Mangione is charged with doing.
Another poll from 2025 similarly found that 40% of young Americans believe political violence can be acceptable under certain circumstances, including when someone “promotes extremist beliefs.”
Gen Zers support Mangione because they see him as a representative of the resentment and anger they have toward the institutions they believe have failed them. They share many of his documented grievances, including climate change doomerism and a frustration with capitalism. Mangione is Gen Z’s Robin Hood or, as the New York Post put it, their Jean Valjean.
By casting Mangione as a figure of fascination rather than condemnation, “Luigi: The Musical” plays into that demented narrative and reinforces the burgeoning belief among young adults that the only way to get the kind of change they want is by violently taking matters into their own hands.
Again, this is deliberate. For many years, the left has used the cultural institutions it dominates, including the arts, to plant the seeds of revolution in America’s youth by teaching them to see themselves as victims of an irredeemably broken system. In this worldview, political violence isn’t a moral failure, but a form of agency.
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Mangione is a direct product of this left-wing fatalism. And so too are the audiences willing to consume his alleged crimes as art.
Unfortunately, this ideology’s influence isn’t just found on the stage. In New York City especially, it has permeated every inch of the city’s political landscape, culminating in the election of socialist and disruptor Mayor Zohran Mamdani last year — an election young adults played a pivotal role in.
In fact, I’d be willing to bet the Venn diagram of young New Yorkers who sport “Hot Girls for Zohran” shirts and those attending “Luigi: The Musical” in June is a circle. After all, Mamdani’s own political campaign director expressed support for Mangione, saying he looks forward “to driving down Mangione Avenue a few decades from now.”
In other words, “Luigi: The Musical” is just the tip of the iceberg. And that means cracking down on the political violence plaguing this country will require more than an intolerance for those romanticizing its perpetrators, such as Mangione. More than anything, it will require confronting the left-wing ideology that is creating these perpetrators in the first place.
