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Most Americans are concerned about the recent increase in political violence, but Broadway seems to be entertained by it.
New York City’s theater hub is set to give 28-year-old alleged murderer Luigi Mangione the star treatment in a satirical musical that will premiere in Manhattan in June. “Luigi: The Musical” will play at a theater just a few miles from where Mangione allegedly shot the father of two, execution-style, in broad daylight.
The choice of location certainly appears to be deliberate, given the timing of the show’s Big Apple debut. Opening night is June 15, a week after Mangione’s state trial was scheduled to begin, unless 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 performance in San Francisco last year was any indication. According to reports, all five performances of the show in June 2025 – six months after Mangione allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – were sold out and received standing ovations.
Murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO: Ivy League graduate suspect sparks anti-capitalist movement
Luigi Mangione leaves the courtroom after his arraignment in New York City Criminal Court on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. Now there’s a musical about him. (Rashid Omar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
The show’s creators have stressed that “Luigi: The Musical” is a comedy and is not intended to minimize 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 alongside Mangione in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.
Except that in Mangione’s case, it does exactly that. The whole purpose of the show, according to one of its co-writers, is to highlight “huge pillars of institutions in society,” including the health care industry, “that are failing in their trust.” Throughout the show, Mangione’s character uses these failures to justify his actions, even calling himself a “martyr” at one point.
“Taking down a small part of our broken healthcare system gives me enough joy to share!” The stage version of Luigi allegedly sings, warning that he will kill any other CEO he considers an obstacle to progress.
Now, unlike music creators, I don’t think people are stupid. It’s quite clear that they’re lining up to see “Luigi: The Musical” for the same reason that its writers were able to craft it in less than two months: because they agree with the underlying reasons Mangione claims he shot a man in the back, and they’re sympathetic to him because of it. And whether they admit it or not, the effect is to make fundamentalism normal – even understandable.
Nearly 40% of young Americans say political violence can be justified in some situations
Unfortunately, my generation, Gen Z, is leading the effort to bring this type of extremism into the mainstream. Young adults my age are worryingly ready to use political violence, with 41% of 18 to 29-year-olds saying in a 2024 survey that they agree that killing a CEO is “somewhat” or “completely” acceptable, as Mangione is accused of doing.
Another 2025 survey similarly found that 40% of young Americans believe political violence can be acceptable in some circumstances, including when someone “promotes extremist beliefs.”
Gen Zers support Mangione because they see her as representative of resentment and anger toward institutions they believe have failed them. They share many of his documented grievances, including the devastation of climate change and frustration with capitalism. Mangione is Gen Z’s Robin Hood or, as New York Post Put it, their Jean Valjean.
By presenting Mangione as a figure of fascination rather than condemnation, “Luigi: The Musical” presents that deranged narrative and reinforces the growing belief among young adults that the only way to get the kind of change they want is to violently take matters into their own hands.
Throughout the show, Mangione’s character uses these failures to justify his actions, even calling himself a “martyr” at one point.
Again, this is intentional. For years, the left has used the cultural institutions it dominates, including the arts, to sow the seeds of revolution by teaching America’s youth to see themselves as victims of an irreparably broken system. In this worldview, political violence is not a moral failure, but a form of agency.
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Mangione is a direct product of this leftist fatalism. And so audiences are willing to consume his alleged crimes as art.
Unfortunately, the influence of this ideology is not just found on the stage. In New York City in particular, it has permeated every inch of the city’s political landscape, culminating in the election last year of socialist and disruptive Mayor Zohran Mamdani – an election in which young adults played a key role.
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In fact, I’m willing to bet the Venn diagram of young New Yorkers wearing “Hot Girls for Zoharan” shirts and people attending “Luigi: The Musical” in June is a circle. After all, Mamdani’s own political campaign director expressed support for Mangione, saying that he “looks forward to finishing 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 that plagues this country will require more than intolerance for those who romanticize its perpetrators, like Mangione. More than anything, this requires first confronting the leftist ideology that is creating these criminals.
Click here to read more from Kaylee McGhee White
