The Abundance Delusion

"(One prototypical post featured the woman's image with the word LUIGI'D stamped over her face, along with the caption "Death is not always tragic.") This was no small group of crazies, either. Some version of the reaction was shared thousands of times across X, Threads, and Bluesky on the grounds that cartoonish caricatures of "the rich" were, in a sense, physically harming the poor. Therefore, killing the rich was an act of self-defense."

"Can center-left liberals, who claim they want to introspect and reform and actually build a lot of housing and infrastructure, and generate new resources rather than punitively redistribute us all into stagnation, open their tent in such a way that there is room for committed, eat-the-rich communism and sensible housing policy alike? Can they not only wrench the youth of their party from Hasan Piker's armpits, but actually get Hasan, a real authentic bad-boy socialist, to join them?"

"Yeah, man, sorry, I don't see it. Provided that the purpose of the Abundance movement is earnestly to galvanize the left under the banner of Abundance, which it will then produce, the project is obviously doomed to fail. Partly this is because of structural issues innate to our political system, and partly this is because large swaths of the left, which Abundance Dems need to win elections, are actively and often publicly fantasizing about sending Abundance Dems to the guillotine."

An online subculture labeled the Luigi Left celebrated a New York City mass killing that included a mother of two who worked at Blackstone. Social posts stamped "LUIGI'D" over the victim's face and captioned "Death is not always tragic." The celebratory reaction spread widely across X, Threads, and Bluesky and framed killings of wealthy people as self-defense against caricatured "the rich" harming the poor. Questions arise about whether center-left Abundance politics can encompass both pragmatic housing policy and extremist eat-the-rich communism. Coalition-building is undermined by public calls for violence and structural obstacles in the political system.

Read at The Atlantic