The name of Luigi Mangione has come up often over the past few days in social media users’ discussions of the fires ravaging Southern California.
Many, angered by State Farm’s decision last summer to cancel hundreds of homeowners policies in some of the neighborhoods now devastated by the blazes, are looking at the 26-year-old as the type of avenger they wish would punish insurance companies that have cut coverage across the state.
Symbols are often contradictory. Despite his privileged personal background Mangione has been claimed by a generation that will never have to worry about home insurance because they won’t ever be able to own a home let alone medical insurance and now by a generation that has lost their homes. Politics may get very interesting in California.
