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Luigi Mangione: Was It Murder? Or Was It Tyrannicide?
Remember Guy Fawkes? Most of you have heard the name and some will know he was part of the Gunpowder Plot in England in 1605 wherein English Roman Catholics tried to end religious persecution against them by blowing up Parliament, King James I, his queen, and his eldest son all in one fell swoop.
Fawkes and his co-conspirators were caught, prosecuted, and executed for attempted regicide, though the conspirators and many — perhaps most — English Catholics felt the crime was better described by a different name: tyrannicide.
The archetypal tyrannicides were Harmodius and Aristogiton of Athens, who in 514 bce planned to murder the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratus. They succeeded only in killing the tyrant’s brother Hipparchus before being killed themselves, but they nevertheless received great posthumous honours from the Athenian populace.
The wealth of CEO’s of today’s major corporations would make the tyrant Croesus weep with envy. Croesus may have been king of Sardis, but a multinational corporation is in many ways above petty notions such as nationhood and national sovereignty. United Health Care (UHC), of which the victim Brian Thompson was CEO, is a global corporation, and was increasingly notorious for denying coverage for necessary — even life-saving — medical care.
