Vance Boelter, Luigi Mangione and how ‘violent populism’ is rattling Minnesota

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.”

In a phone interview, Pape said the acts attributed to Mangione and Boelter fit that description.

Mangione, 27, is said to have traveled to Manhattan, wore a mask to conceal his identity for several days, laid in wait outside a New York hotel and then shot Thompson three times early in the morning as the CEO left to attend an investors conference. Police found bullet casings with the words “deny,” “delay” and “depose” written on them — a reference to how insurers can obstruct medical coverage claims.

When Mangione was arrested, a letter addressed to federal officers detailed his complaints against the health care system in the United States. He wrote that the problem was complex: “Power games” were at play, but “these parasites had it coming,” and “evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

Boelter, 57, is accused of traveling throughout the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis while wearing a mask, dressed as a police officer and driving a police-style SUV. Authorities say he visited the homes of four Democratic lawmakers in all.

Officers found in his SUV flyers that read “No Kings,” a reference to nationwide protests against President Donald Trump slated for that day. There were also lists of names and addresses of several politicians.

After the Hortmans were killed and the Hoffmans were in surgery, Boelter texted his family: “Dad went to war last night.”

When he was arrested, a letter that he had allegedly written was addressed to the FBI. Two people with direct knowledge of the letter said it was rambling and filled with conspiracy theories, including that Gov. Tim Walz instructed him to kill U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar so that Walz could run for the Senate.

Federal prosecutors say Mangione and Boelter admitted to being the killers in their letters. They were charged with several of the same federal crimes: stalking through the use of interstate facilities, murder through use of a firearm and firearm offenses.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is seeking the death penalty against Mangione, and that remains possible for Boelter.

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.”

The targeting of CEOs and politicians is a sign of fragility in the structures of the country, Pape said. The situation is not unique to the U.S. and has been seen throughout recent history, he added.

Pape said he has spoken to many CEOs who can’t believe they would be targeted. The same goes for those in law enforcement, politicians and the media.

“They’re having a hard time really coming to grips with the new era of violent populism,” Pape said. “The rules are changing, and they’re becoming much more dangerous.”

He said acts of political violence are more easily understood when they are “compartmentalized,” meaning a person is disgruntled with a specific target and goes after them.

“That’s not what happened here,” Pape said, adding that Mangione had no specific reason to kill Thompson and Boelter’s list of targets was generalized toward Democratic politicians.

After the attacks on the Hortmans and Hoffmans, several politicians, including Minnesota’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, blamed the increase in violence on Trump’s rhetoric.

But Pape said he believes there’s little partisan difference between the political violence being carried out.

In 2004, he started the Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago, a research center that has spent millions of dollars on surveys to learn people’s feelings on political violence.

It was also one of the lead investigators into the demographics of participants in the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol and studied the protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis in 2020.

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.

Many other surveys have drawn similar conclusions of increasing support for political violence. However, others have questioned the methodology of studies that show high public support for such violence.

But Pape argues that the past five years show a clear rise in incidents. He pointed to violent protests against law enforcement, the Jan. 6 riot and the attempted assassination of Trump on the campaign trial.

The cases against Mangione and Boelter show how individuals can come to believe they are at war to defend an ideal.

Pape has researched identical scenarios in the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, and said the same dynamic has come to the U.S.

“When political power is fragile, that’s when you see the rise of political violence in a chronic way,” he said. “And it becomes normal in the body politic.”

Pape said this is the most volatile time in American culture since the 1960s. And he said the rationale for any individual act of violence is less important than two large-scale changes in the county: the shrinking of the white population from 89% in 1960 to 58% in 2023 and the widening economic gap where wealth is being heavily concentrated in the top 20%.

“That’s producing sort of a radical 10 or 15 percent of our public,” Pape said. “And that’s what we find in our surveys.”

He sees one extreme side of the country trying to revert to what he called “traditional America,” which wants to reclaim a past way of life. The opposite extreme side views that stance as an oppression of progress and something that must be defeated.

Just as importantly, extreme actions can find support.

In the six months since Mangione was charged with killing Thompson, an online fundraiser launched by his legal team has raised $1.5 million. After Hortman was killed in Brooklyn Park, Utah U.S. Sen. Mike Lee quickly boosted a false claim that the assailant was from the left, posting on social media, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”

“We’re seeing the rise of portions of the public supporting political violence,” Pape said. “They can tell from social media reactions, the massive support, and they can tell by listening to politicians on whichever side ... what they’re hearing is, ‘This is how I’m going to become famous.’”

Pape said understanding the underlying causes to what’s happening in America is necessary to try to find solutions, and that’s especially true here.

“I’m just very sorry that it’s also happening to to Minnesota,” he said. “Because you folks are just on this front line of change here.”