Mythic Violence, Memes, and the Recursive Rhetorics of Resistance

Abstract: Under contemporary digital conditions, political myth operates through memes that collapse the temporal interval liberal deliberation requires. Reading the case of Luigi Mangione, I show how memetic speech acts convert resistance into spectacle, foreclosing the possibility of revolt. Drawing on theorists of myth, performativity, and revolt—from Sorel and Foucault to Barthes, Butler, and Fanon—I argue that authoritarian myths thrive on virality's affective compression, while oppositional myths are metabolized as engagement before they can mobilize rupture. The Mangione phenomenon confronts liberal complicity: when systemic violence is normalized as order, refusing counter-violence may become yet another alibi for sanctioned death.