By Sonia C. Gomez
Before Luigi Mangione, there was Giuseppe Zangara.
In 1933, Zangara, an Italian immigrant, attempted to assassinate President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Driven by a lifetime of pain and a deep resentment of capitalism, Zangara was sentenced to death for his actions. Nearly a century later, Luigi Mangione, a third-generation Italian American, is on trial for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Though separated by time and circumstance, their actions are connected by a history of Italian American resistance to capitalist exploitation—a history that is almost all but forgotten.
Aside from their Italian origins, Zangara and Mangione share many qualities. While one is a convicted assassin; the other is a suspected assassin. Both hold political views that seem to baffle their contemporaries. Both publicly expressed an anti-capitalist position. Both lived with debilitating pain. While almost a century separates these two men, the America that Zangara lived in resembles America today: The gap between rich and poor is wide and growing. Corporations reap ungodly profits while many Americans are scrambling to get by. Stark inequality drove Zangara to violence and it is, allegedly, what drove Mangione as well.
At the height of the Great Depression, Zangara attempted to assassinate President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt but missed and instead struck five others including Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago, who died weeks later from his injuries. The attempted assassination took place as the country was eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new administration. In 1932, the year FDR was elected, unemployment reached 24%, and millions lived in poverty. Today wage stagnation and the rising cost of living have created a “silent depression” for many working-class Americans. The top 1% now control more wealth than the bottom 90%, mirroring the disparities of Zangara’s time.
The similarities between Zangara and Mangione grew as folks speculated that Mangione might have been radicalized by back pain caused by a surfing accident. Zangara was also radicalized by pain. During his trial, Zangara testified that for years he had experienced intense abdomen pain after being sent to work on his father’s farm at the age of six. The pain “tormented him like fire for the rest of his life,” described The New Yorker in a 1954 profile of Zangara titled, “The Long Stomach Ache.”[1] His chronic pain forced him to live an austere life devoid of pleasure. He didn’t smoke, drink alcohol, or spend money foolishly.
Giuseppe Zangara, known as Joe, was born in Italy in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in 1923. He settled in Paterson, New Jersey, “an anarchist haven,” as historian Marcella Bencivenni has described, near an uncle and worked as a bricklayer.[2] Investigators believed that Zangara was not politically motivated because he was a registered Republican, not a socialist or anarchist, they concluded. The media portrayed him as a deranged “little Italian immigrant,” “swarthy,” and “pop-eyed” reflecting the anti-Italian sentiment of the time.[3] Though Zangara may not have been a formal member of a political organization his views mirrored the Italian American Left of Paterson of the late 19th and early 20th century. Yet, Zangara was anti-capitalist. During his trial, He lamented:
“The Capitalist…keep the money from my father…and my father send me to work, and I have no school, and I have trouble with my stomach…since my stomach hurt, I get even with the capitalist by killing the president.”[4]
Italian American radicalism began with the mass migration of Italians at the end of the 19th century. Among the millions who entered the US seeking economic opportunities were a significant number of anarchists escaping political repression laying the foundation for a vibrant, loosely connected, network of radical groups. Though many Italian immigrants arrived in the United States with political convictions shaped in the old country, many became radicalized by the poor working and living conditions they encountered in the US.[5] They turned to circolis, radical circles that formed in Italian immigrant communities in New Jersey and New York. According to historian Jennifer Guglielmo, these groups circulated reading material, published newspapers in Italian, provided mutual aid, organized dances, festivals, and lectures. Most of these circles were small but in Paterson participation was in the thousands. Woman also played a significant role in the circles and organized auxiliary groups that were critical of capitalism, the church, and the patriarchal family structure.[6]Many members of the radical circles identified as anarchists, anarchist-communist, revolutionary socialist, and anarchist-syndicalists. Some, like Luigi Galleani who ran the Cronaca Sovversiva—An Italian American anarchist periodical—endorsed political violence as a form of resistance to power.[7] Galleani, however, was not alone in his embrace of violence. In 1900, Gaetano Bresci, an Italian man who had spent time in Paterson before returning to Italy, assassinated King Umberto of Italy. The murder of Umberto was one of many high-profile assassinations committed by Italian radicals at the turn of the 20th century and although most of the perpetrators acted alone, they were rooted in a broader movement of militant Italian American radicals.[8]
By the early 20th century, Italian Americans had become deeply involved in labor union organizing, playing key roles in significant strikes in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Minnesota. Italian American labor organizing was particularly prominent in Paterson, where groups such as Il Gruppo Diritto all’Esistenza (The Right to Existence Group), committed to anarchist and syndicalist ideologies, actively opposed capitalist exploitation. The group was affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and actively participated in the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike.[9] Italian American radicalism was a political disposition, but it was also cultural. In Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940, Bencivenni shows how their politics were shaped by ethnic identity, the immigrant experience, a commitment to working class revolution, and an internationalist worldview.[10] However, World War I and the subsequent Red Scare brought intense state repression of radical movements. The 1927 execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—followers of Luigi Galleani—delivered a fatal blow to the movement.[11] Despite this, Italian American radicalism remained influential until World War II. By the time Zangara arrived in Paterson, radical organizing was beginning to wane but was still a significant part of the lives of poor and working-class Italian American communities. In the 1930s and 40s, a new generation of radicals joined the Communist Party.[12] Much of this rich history of revolutionary activism in the Italian American community has been lost or forgotten over the years.
Ninety-one years after Zangara attempted to assassinate FDR, during another crisis of capitalism, while Americans anxiously awaited the transition to a second Trump term, Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was murdered in broad daylight on a NYC street. But while Americans were eager for FDR to take office, hoping he would pull the country out of the Depression, many Americans were bracing for the worst when Thompson was killed. Thompson was no FDR, to be sure. But he symbolized the wanton greed of the corporate class. UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, is the largest health carrier in the US. In 2022, UnitedHealth Group made over $20 billion in profit, the most of any healthcare insurer. In his manifesto, Mangione decried that corporations are “too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit,” echoing Giuseppe Zangara’s frustration with capitalist greed almost a century earlier.
Though Zangara chose FDR as his victim out of convenience, he had hoped that by assassinating FDR, he would bring about a new system of governance free from capitalist rule, where all are born truly equal. After being sent to work on his father’s farm as a small child, Zangara never returned to school. He resented being deprived of an education until his dying day. In Zangara’s perfect world “the children of the capitalist make no difference,” education would be for all, he explained. Zangara’s political beliefs reflected the anarchist-communist ideology popular in Italian American radical circles that advocated for an end to capitalism and the creation of an egalitarian society free from state rule.[13]
Zangara was also “chronically resentful of authority,” apparently a disposition he inherited from his father, the New Yorker noted.[14]
Zangara’s abdomen pain was debilitating. He was in too much pain to be physically intimate and preferred to live alone. Reportedly, Mangione’s pain also prevented him from being intimate. Though pain was enough to cause both men to forgo intimacy, that alone does not explain Zangara’s actions and Mangione’s alleged actions. Besides time, there is much that sets Zangara and Mangione apart. The two men come from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds–one poor and uneducated, the other highly educated and wealthy. One was an Italian immigrant, the other a third generation Italian American. Both men primarily operated outside of formal political organizations. Instead, they were radicalized by their personal struggles with physical pain and contempt for capitalism in a world of immense inequality and growing political divisions. Zangara and Mangione’s—alleged—actions were not necessarily part of the “propaganda of the deed,” as the evidence available doesn’t suggest they sought to spark a revolution, though they each had hoped to call attention to the failings of capitalism.
While Zangara denied direct political influence, his actions echoed the ethos of Italian American anarchists who saw violence as a legitimate response to oppression. Mangione, though removed from this history by generations, seems to have inherited a similar political worldview.
In both cases, authorities emphasized that they acted alone failing to see how such actions were part of a longer history of Italian American radicalism and widespread criticism of capitalism. When Giuseppe Zangara attempted to assassinate FDR, he was acting upon this history in which political violence was a necessary means to an end. Was Luigi Mangione doing the same?
Zangara, a poor immigrant with little education, and Mangione, a wealthy third-generation Italian American, came from vastly different worlds. Yet both were driven by a shared belief that capitalism had failed them and others. Zangara was sentenced to death for the murder of Cermak and attempted murder of Roosevelt. Though he was encouraged to plead insanity, he refused. Before his execution he reportedly shouted, “I no scared of electric chair…All capitalist lousy bunch of crooks!” After he was executed, Zangara’s brain was studied by a psychologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who found it “perfectly normal.” However, his gall bladder was covered in lesions which was likely the cause of his pain. Authorities concluded, stomach pain was Zangara’s motive.[15]
Zangara and Mangione’s—alleged—use of violence raises difficult questions about political resistance. Can violence ever be a legitimate response to economic oppression? As we grapple with today’s vast economic inequalities, we must come to terms with the fact the acts of violence like those of Zangara and—allegedly–Mangione, are evidence that capitalism is an economic and moral failure.
AUTHOR BIO
Sonia C. Gomez is an Assistant Professor of History at Santa Clara University. She is the author of Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America (NYU Press, 2024) and is currently working on a book that examines girlhood, interracial female friendships, and letter writing during the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans. At Santa Clara University, she teaches courses on migration, the history of anti-miscegenation laws and practices, and social movements.
Social Media:
Twitter: @soniachristinee
Instagram/threads: sonchie_gomez
[1] Robert J. Donovan, “Annals of Crime: The Long Stomach Ache,” The New Yorker, Nov 27, 1954: 108.
[2] Marcella Bencivenni, “Fired by Ideal: Italian Anarchists in New York City, 18802-1920s,” in Tom Goyens (ed.), Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab’s Saloon to Occupy Wall Street (Oxford University Press, 2017), 55.
[3] The Ada Weekly News, March 13, 1933; The Indianapolis Star, February 17, 1933.
[4] Donovan, “The Long Stomach Ache,” 108.
[5] Bencivenni, “Fired by Ideal,” 57-58.
[6] Jennifer Guglielmo, Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945(University of North Carolina Press 2010) 142.
[7] Bencivenni, “Fired by Ideal,” 62.
[8] Bencivenni, “Fired by Ideal,” 68.
[9] Salvatore Salerno, “No God, No Master: Italian Anarchists and the Industrial Workers of the World,” In The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism, Phillip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, eds (Praeger Publishers, 2003), 172-181.
[10] Marcella Bencivenni, Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940 (New York University Press, 2011), 3.
[11] Michael Miller Topp. Those Without Country: The Political Culture of Italian American Syndicalists (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 263.
[12] Topp, Those Without Country, 264.
[13] Bencivenni, “Fired by Ideal,” 61.
[14] Donovan, “The Long Stomach Ache,” 110.
[15] The Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1934.