Something strange indeed. Yet the Clancy fan club — complete with online support groups and crowds who show up outside the courthouse dressed in pink to cheer her on — is not the only recent cohort of crazy. Luigi Mangione, the 28-year-old man who admitted in federal court that he shot and killed UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, has a growing legion of supporters. There is even a website where fans can learn how to send Luigi letters and read his statements. This, for a self-confessed killer who left a wife without a husband and two young boys without a father. And, of course, conspiracy theorists, egged on by Candace Owens’s rapid-fire theories, have tried to make alleged Charlie Kirk killer Tyler Robinson a cult hero.
Then, on August 31, a woman armed with two knives randomly attacked two people in Times Square, killing Bank of America employee Erin Piacenti as she stood at a food cart. Piacenti, 32, was a young mother who had recently returned from maternity leave. Inexplicably, online ghouls celebrated her death for the crime of working for a bank. One Hollywood director even marked the occasion with a Luigi meme.
High-profile murderers have always attracted prurient interest and fringe groupies. The Manson Family was linked to at least nine murders, and Charles Manson maintained a small but rabid following. But today, a few cultural forces have brought us to the point where accused and admitted killers alike are lauded as heroes.
First, we live in an age of expressive individualism, a term popularized by sociologist Robert Bellah and his coauthors. It describes the belief that every person has an authentic self within and that the purpose of life is to discover and express that self. Identity, then, is not received from family, religion, tradition, or a moral order outside us. It is found by looking inward. Authenticity becomes a virtue. So the “real” Lindsay Clancy, according to her fans, is not the woman who strangled her children in a barbaric and torturous way, but the loving and caring mother underneath the act. And the blame falls not on Clancy but on the institutions that were supposed to protect her: her family, the pharmaceutical industry, and a society that demanded too much of her. There is no doubt that Clancy suffered severe mental anguish. But according to her fans, that anguish means she is not morally culpable for what she did.
Click Here to Read More (Originally Published at the Daily Wire )
Daniel Darling is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary, a columnist for World, and the author of several books, including his latest, “In Defense of Christian Patriotism.
