On 7 November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew
living in Paris, walked into the German embassy and assassinated
a Nazi diplomat. Grynszpan spent 20 months in French prisons
before being handed over to the Nazis and transferred to a
concentration camp. While rejecting the tactic of individual
terror, Trotsky vigorously demanded that Grynszpan be freed from
the clutches of the bourgeois state. Similar considerations
guide our attitude to the imprisoned Luigi Mangione, who is
accused of striking down a capitalist parasite.