Broadway’s Luigi Mangione musical normalizes political violence for Gen Z

Most Americans are concerned about the recent increase in political violence, but Broadway seems to be enjoying it.

New York City’s theater center is preparing to give 28-year-old alleged murderer Luigi Mangione the star treatment in a satirical musical set to premiere in Manhattan in June. “Luigi: The Musical” will be shown 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 seems intentional, as does the timing of the show’s Big Apple debut. Opening night was June 15, a week after Mangione’s state trial was supposed to begin until a New York judge postponed the trial until this fall.

But the show will go on regardless, and if its brief run in San Francisco last year is any indication, it’s likely to sell out. According to reports, all five performances of the show sold out and received a standing ovation in June 2025, just six months after Mangione allegedly killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

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The series’ creators insisted that “Luigi: The Musical” is a comedy and is 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 depicted in the musical alongside Mangione at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center.

But that’s exactly what he did in the Mangione case. The whole point of the series, according to one of the show’s co-writers, is to reveal that “great pillars of institutions in society,” including the healthcare industry, are “losing trust.” Throughout the show, Mangione’s character uses these failures to justify his actions, even at one point. to call he is a “martyr”.

“Destroying a small part of our broken healthcare system gives me enough joy to share!” The stage version of Luigi reportedly sings and warns that he will kill any CEO he deems an obstacle to progress.

Unlike the creators of the musical, I don’t think people are stupid. They’re lining up to see “Luigi: The Musical” for the same reason its writers were able to whip it up in less than two months: Because they agree with Mangione’s underlying reasons that he claims drove him to allegedly shoot a man in the back, and so they sympathize with him. Whether they admit it or not, the effect is to make radicalization commonplace, even understandable.

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Unfortunately, my generation, Generation Z, appears to be leading the effort to mainstream such extremism. Young adults my age are alarmingly vulnerable to political violence; In a 2024 survey, 41% of 18- to 29-year-olds say they agree that killing a CEO like Mangione is accused of doing is “somewhat” or “completely” acceptable.

Another poll conducted in 2025 similarly found that 40% of young Americans believe political violence can be acceptable under certain circumstances, including if someone “promotes extremist beliefs.”

Generation Z supports Mangione because they see him as representative of their resentment and anger at institutions they believe have failed them. They share many of his documented grievances, including the disaster of climate change and disillusionment with capitalism. Mangione is the Robin Hood of Generation Z or New York Post that is, their Jean Valjean.

“Luigi: The Musical” exploits this crazy narrative by portraying Mangione as a figure of admiration rather than condemnation, reinforcing the burgeoning belief among young adults that the only way to achieve 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 left fatalism. Viewers are also willing to consume his alleged crimes as art.

Unfortunately, the impact of this ideology is not only 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 subversive Mayor Zohran Mamdani; a choice in which young adults play a key role.

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In fact, I’d bet the Venn diagram of young New Yorkers wearing “Hot Girls for Zohran” T-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 looked forward to “driving down Mangione Boulevard a few decades from now.”

In other words, “Luigi: The Musical” is just the tip of the iceberg. This means that addressing the political violence that has plagued this country will require more than intolerance for those who, like Mangione, romanticize its perpetrators. More than anything, it will require confronting the leftist ideology that created these perpetrators.

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