Vigilante Justice Explained
Made Possible through a Lack of Faith, Confidence, and Hope
There have “always” been vigilantes. Robin Hood wasn’t the first one (nor the most violent, by any stretch of the imagination, albeit a fictional character).
Why does vigilantism exist? What causes a person to become a vigilante? Peer pressure is against the would-be vigilante, as most people will find their actions terrible, unconscionable, impossible to forgive, or even treasonous. And the personal prospects for the perpetrator are not the brightest, to say the least. After all, how many vigilantes go on to live long, pleasant, and peaceful lives?
Yet vigilantism still occurs, the most recent widely-known example being the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last month (on December 4th, 2024, to be precise) by Luigi Mangione.
The motives and compelling reasons for such drastic acts of vengeance are made possible by three key conclusions drawn by those who turn themselves into vigilantes in response to what they perceive as a gross injustice:
They have no confidence in the authorities to render a fair and commensurate punishment upon the person who is the target of their wrath
They lack faith in God to set matters right and/or do not exercise patience in waiting for his justice to be rendered
They don’t view their lives as being more important or valuable than carrying out their form of “justice”
For just one example of why people may lose faith in the authorities to do the right and fair thing, see this article about Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife’s experiences in the 1800s (note: Dull Knife was known to some as “Morning Star”). This maltreatment of Native Americans was not an outlier or an exception.
When it comes to the specific case of Thompson and Mangione, and similar acts of vigilantism, it could be that the self-styled hero (Mangione, in this instance) considered his victim guilty of inflicting suffering on untold others due to withholding aid legally and ethically due to them (in other words, not paying their insurance claims), in some cases even leading to the deaths of many of those denied coverage due to not receiving the medical care they needed in a timely manner. And would these malefactors, Mangione may have wondered dubiously, ever be justly called to account by a court of law? Or, rather, would those robber barons’ “fancy-pants lawyers” bring forth 1,000 points of darkness to obscure the truth, concealing the 50 shades of greed driving their inhuman and inhumane acts of malice and malpractice? Thompson made a lot of money for his masters, and for himself, but at what (human) cost? Ultimately, even for his overlords and, obviously, to himself, there are/were debts to be paid.
Take as another example Purdue Pharma, run by the Sackler family (or, as I prefer to call them, the SACK O’ShitLER family). They contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people by pushing the highly addictive and deadly drug Oxycontin, and yet they “got away with it” through the failure of the so-called justice system: the “Sacklers” are still free, rather than in prison where they belong, and they are still wealthy, living a privileged existence despite the massive pain and harm they have caused. I wrote articles about them, and my firstborn son Kelvin, a victim of their deviltry, here (published November 2020) and here (published October 2021) and here (published August 2023).
Lacking confidence in the justice system or lacking faith in God, and seeing their quest for quick justice as having more importance than their own comfort, more vigilantes will make their discontent known, loudly and clearly. Robin Hood wasn’t the first vigilante; Luigi Mangione won’t be the last.
Full disclosure in case you didn’t read the articles about Purdue Pharma linked to above: I am not a vigilante-in-waiting, because I do have faith in God to rectify all injustices (and soon!).UPDATE 1/23/2025
Coincidentally, the day after I posted the article above, this appeared in the New York Times:
