The Bigger Vigilante-Worship Problem Is Happening on the Right

On December 9, police in Pennsylvania arrested Luigi Mangione for allegedly shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in front of the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan five days earlier. The manhunt turned the 26-year-old into an unlikely folk hero and sex symbol. Revelers trashed the slain insurance executive as an evil profiteer, while surveillance images of Mangione’s face triggered thirsty reactions on social media. “Raw, next question,” read one characteristic response to a resurfaced shirtless photo.

Laura Ingraham was outraged. “Twisted hero worship,” fumed the Fox News host, decrying the supposed “liberal wackos” who were salivating over Mangione’s “Italian good looks.” “Clearly, if you want to be a sympathetic assassin for a certain class of people, it pays to do lots of crunches, planks, and other core exercises,” quipped National Review editor Rich Lowry.

Yet for all this partisan hand-wringing, Lowry’s observation could just as easily describe Daniel Penny, another lusted-after 26-year-old killer who was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide the same day that Mangione was arrested. Penny’s legal case has been a right-wing cause célèbre ever since he choked a Black busker to death on the F train last year. In the same segment where she bewailed those thirsting after Mangione, Ingraham described Penny as a “hero” whose acquittal ensured that “hope is not lost in New York.”

This perverse double standard is not merely hypocritical. Mangione’s fan base is much like Mangione himself — ideologically scattered, conspicuously online, and given coherent meaning mainly by its collective hatred of America’s private health-insurance system. Penny fandom, on the other hand, is part of a conservative tradition of vigilante worship that goes all the way to the top of the Republican Establishment.

“I have not said much about this case for fear of (negatively) influencing the jury,” vice-president-elect J.D. Vance wrote on X after the Penny verdict. “But thank God justice was done … It was a scandal Penny was ever prosecuted in the first place.” Activist Christopher Rufo described Penny as a persecuted “white man” and praised the outcome as a sign that “the real spirit of justice is returning to America.” Charlie Kirk, the activist tasked with vetting President-elect Donald Trump’s potential Cabinet appointees, wrote, “Daniel Penny is a hero,” among several other posts celebrating his acquittal. Penny “deserves a medal from NYC and Donald Trump,” tweeted Rudy Giuliani.

Elsewhere, the praise was more nakedly carnal, gushing over everything from Penny’s looks to his perceived temperament. Political commentator Helen Andrews penned a fawning essay comparing the former U.S. marine, whom she described as a “curly-haired warrior” standing “erect” and “serene” above his police captors, to a Roman statue. Fox News host Jeanine Pirro praised his apparent humility, saying he had the “courage of a lion.” One X user claimed the former marine was only prosecuted because he was “blonde and handsome.” Another wrote that Penny’s innocence was further proven by the fact that not enough mentally ill women were lusting after him online, like they supposedly were for Mangione, “despite his obvious handsomeness.” “A literal Adonis,” observed yet another. “Sometimes,” captioned an X user underneath a flattering photo of Penny alongside a less flattering photo of one of his prosecutors, “in the battle between good and evil, physiognomy alone tells you more than any words can.”

There is no equivalent to this reaction in left-leaning media outlets or among figures in the Democratic Party. On the contrary, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, expressing what seems to be a dominant sentiment among liberals, said, “In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”

The approving X posts, news segments, and jubilant reshares of footage of Penny celebrating at a Manhattan bar after the verdict — all of it felt familiar. Kyle Rittenhouse, the then-teenager who killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, is an obvious template. By the time he was acquitted in 2021, Rittenhouse had been made the subject of a documentary by Tucker Carlson. He was subsequently offered internships by then-Congressmen Matt Gaetz and Madison Cawthorn, among others, and was invited to meet Trump. His image was commercialized by boutique retailers — a Texas gun range held a Rittenhouse-themed “not guilty” sale in his honor. Penny merchandise has already hit the sales racks: On Deplorable Tees, the MAGA-themed online retailer, you can now buy a “Daniel Penny did nothing wrong” T-shirt for $22.95.

This phenomenon predates Trump and the culture industry spawned by his rise. George Zimmerman, the neighborhood-watch volunteer who killed Trayvon Martin in 2012, was so encouraged by his own commercial prospects after his acquittal — a print of one of his paintings was sold by a Florida gun store, while an online vendor started selling shooting targets meant to approximate Martin — that in 2016, he put up for auction the gun he used to kill the Black teen, later claiming to have sold it for a quarter-million dollars. This happened after key figures in the conservative-media elite rallied to his defense, including Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

What ultimately distinguishes the right’s embrace of vigilantes is how strikingly comprehensive it is, encompassing memes and merch and involving everyone from the lowest shitposter to the vice-president-elect. It is no accident that a race-baiting political movement, nominally dedicated to restoring a fictional past American glory, is so invested in protecting the right of everyday citizens to kill Black strangers they consider dangerous. Nor should it be taken lightly that such vigilantes are now poised to have even more free rein: They express the will of a political faction that is about to reclaim the White House, control both chambers of Congress, and sustain its U.S. Supreme Court majority.

It is one thing to lust after a rogue killer as a random horny X user. It is another to do so on behalf of the most powerful political movement in the West.