Vance Boelter, Luigi Mangione and how 'violent populism' is rattling Minnesota [View all]

The federal charges describe eerily similar crimes: Well-planned assassinations by seemingly everyday citizens with no serious criminal history targeting the political and socioeconomic infrastructure of America. And the targets of those assassinations were Minnesotans.

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson of Maple Grove was shot dead last December on the streets of New York City, leading to a five-day manhunt and the arrest of Luigi Mangione. On June 14, in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis, a gunman shot and killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and seriously wounded Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. Two days later, Vance Boelter was arrested.

Prosecutors allege Mangione and Boelter believed the murders carried a greater meaning.

Robert Pape is a University of Chicago professor who has studied political violence for 30 years. In the past five years, he said, the dynamic of that violence has changed in America and Minnesota is at the epicenter.

He referred to this time as the “era of violent populism.”

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Pape said the documents the two men allegedly left behind are crucial to understanding political violence in America. “It’s not just what’s in the message,” he said. “But the fact that they’re sending messages and they’re leaving materials that can be easily found when they’re arrested or killed, and they’re expecting that.

“They’re doing this for what they believe is a social cause. The left calls it social justice, but that’s also what’s happening on the right. They’re basically social justice warriors, or you could think of it as culture wars.”

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Pape said 39% of Democrats surveyed supported using political violence to stop the Trump agenda and 25% of Republicans supported using the military to suppress protests against the president.

“This is what I mean by the radicalization of the two parts of the political spectrum, the two ends of the political spectrum,” he said.

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https://www.startribune.com/vance-boelter-luigi-mangione-assassinations-minnesotans-violent-populism/601375284