Levine | Violent resistance and terror: Where do we draw the line?

Opinion by Jennifer Levine
Published Feb. 2, 2025, 10:58 p.m., last updated Feb. 6, 2025, 8:30 p.m.

Whether it’s the news, the thirst tweets or even family dinner conversation over the holidays, everyone’s been talking about the suspect charged in the United Healthcare CEO’s killing, Luigi Mangione. Depending on where you get your media, reactions to the shooting have been completely polarized. 

From social media users lauding Mangione as a “hero” of the proletariat to Mayor Eric Adams calling his shooting an act of terrorism that “traumatized” the entire industry of corporate executives, Mangione’s celebrity status has sparked discourse around the insurance industry and the ethical implications of political violence. 

From a historical perspective, Mangione’s star turn has been made possible by the advent of social media and globalization, which has allowed individuals to more easily express their opinions, criticize political institutions and organize to effect change. In general, much of this organizing has been peaceful, coming in the form of strikes, marches or boycotts. Indeed, through the 20th century, “campaigns of nonviolent resistance against authoritarian regimes were twice as likely to succeed as violent movements.” This is largely due to the fact that a democracy is more likely to replace a dictatorship when war has not exaggerated the standing conflict. 

However, in the 21st century, this trend toward nonviolent resistance has become unpredictably successful as a result of external factors such as social media, international aid and regional conflict. This makes it difficult to accurately assess their long-term efficacy. Despite the beneficial after-effects of nonviolent resistance (provided the movement succeeds), protests have become — as most prominently demonstrated by the Jan. 6 insurrection — increasingly brutal and aggressive, demonstrating America’s mainstream normalization and acceptance of political violence. When politicians endorse violence on national TV and the contagion effect of highly-publicized shootings or media portrayals of increased aggression encourage more of the same, young people become particularly susceptible to undue influence, pushing the inevitability of violence as a definite future rather than a possibility. 

In 2020, there was a staggering 5% increase in violent crime compared to the year before. Experts have pointed to political unrest, the COVID-19 pandemic and economic depression as causes, suggesting that when people’s qualities of life are lower, their actions are more aggressive. Although violent crime is lower now than it was four years ago, the perception of rising crime (particularly violent crime) has risen significantly across the country. Huge numbers of voters from both the Democratic and Republican Party believe crime should be a top priority for the government according to the Pew Research Center, as demonstrated by both harsh legislation against crime and law-and-order candidates having great success in recent elections. People are afraid and in an effort to protect themselves from victimhood, they perpetuate violence for the sake of prevention.  

Fearmongering, oversaturation of violence in media and the sensationalization of graphic horror keep the politics of violence in business. We’re kept in a state of terror – will World War III finally break out? Is my school next in a long line of shootings? Could I be killed while riding the subway? These concerns are exponentially multiplied by the clickbait nature of social media algorithms, force feeding us our worst nightmares and pushing a narrative that violence is everywhere. This narrative isn’t wrong, but the blame is disproportionately centered on individual actors rather than institutions that perpetuate harm. 

Our standards of violence vary depending on the individual perpetrator. When boys on the playground say they won’t hit a girl back, her punch is considered less of a threat, or less violent, than his. When a young Black man reaches into his hoodie, police assume he’s getting a gun. When the government holds our budget hostage, threatening people’s jobs and delaying their benefits, it’s considered a harm to citizens’ quality of life rather than an act of violence. 

These unbalanced expectations have drastic consequences. As of 2019, Black Americans spent more time in jail for violent crimes than their white or Hispanic counterparts, according to the Pew Research Center. The government enables violence against anyone it deems a threat — civilians overseas, Black Americans and undocumented immigrants. It unsurprisingly draws the line at their campaign donors. Violence is much easier to get away with when your existence itself is not considered a threat to the status quo. 

Mangione, a white man with an Ivy League education and generational wealth, has inverted white America’s expectations of a terrorist. Charged with terrorism, he is accused of “intimidating or coercing a civilian population”, something that could have been applied to former NYPD officer Daniel Penny, who was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide last year for suffocating unhoused street performer Jordan Neely in a chokehold just a few days after Mangione allegedly shot Brian Thompson. 

Yet Penny’s actions are not considered terrorism, because they are within the norm for American standards of violence: violence against Black Americans, particularly at the hands of law enforcement, is a historically powerful and often-used tool for disenfranchisement and legal oppression. Terror is a term applicable exclusively for threats or harms not defended by institutional tradition. 

Explaining his views on nonviolence, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Mahatma Gandhi pushes back against the idea that the ends justify the means, instead characterizing the ends as being defined by how we go about achieving them. “They say ‘means are, after all, means.’ I would say ‘means are, after all, everything.’ As the means, so the end,” Gandhi said.

Violence as a form of rebellion does not guarantee a new, peaceful state, but rather, normalizes a culture of retributive justice instead of restoration. A rule of law established by fear is not powerful; it is unstable. Discontent only grows, and when people are afraid, they don’t always submit. They act out, as evidenced by the Mangione case. 

Regardless of how resistance is sought, change is never guaranteed. Yet rather than guaranteeing positive change, or at least positive adjustment, reactionary and retributive action only further distance communities and erode trust. Even if violence is more attention-grabbing, we have to sacrifice those simple binaries of good and evil for the sake of normalizing peaceful resistance and not establishing violent norms. 



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