The 'grey tribe' leanings of alleged murderer Mangione

The man accused of killing UnitedHeathcare CEO Brian Thompson had a telling social-media history, writes Io Dodds

- Io Dodds

Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, followed Richard Dawkins and RFK Jr, tweeted about neuroscience and Japanese birth rates, and shared posts about how to think more logically.

The 26-year-old was fascinated by AI and decision theory; protechnology but anti-smartphones; secular and scientific in his outlook, but in favour of religion on Darwinian grounds.

What does it all mean? Luigi Mangione’s worldview might not be familiar to most Americans, and it’s certainly not a common one among politically motivated killers. Nevertheless, his social media posts, and the users he engaged with, mark him out indelibly as a very specific type of online person – one that’s intimately familiar to me.

“Increasingly looks like we’ve got our first grey tribe shooter, and boy howdy is the media not ready for that,” wrote the journalist and extremism expert Robert Evans, who analysed Mangione’s online life earlier this week.

There’s no single accepted name for this loose, extremely online subculture of bloggers, philosophers, shitposters and Silicon Valley coders. “The grey tribe” is one term; “the rationalist movement” is another.

First, let me stress that, so far, there’s little evidence that this worldview inspired Thompson’s killing, at least directly. Unlike more usual suspects like neo-Nazis or Islamic jihadists, grey tribe thinkers rarely preach armed insurrection, and are more likely to advocate social change through high-quality randomised controlled studies.

Moreover, violent acts are never the consequence of ideology alone. Mangione hadn’t tweeted since June, and it’s unclear where he has lived or what he has done in the last few months. Mangione had recently dropped out of contact with his friends and family, and appears to have suffered from “life-halting” chronic pain. These factors should complicate any simple assumptions about any potential motivation.