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Yeah I just watched the video and I just gotta say massive fuck you to all the people who shit on this dude or just write him off as “a troop.” He opens up the video and says he’s about to engage in “an extreme act of protest” but “compared to what people in Palestine have been experiencing at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all” and then lights himself on fucking fire.
If you watch that and don’t have even the slightest bit of empathy or think that he is not in any way a comrade, there is something wrong with you
Yeah he shouldn’t have joined the military, yeah he shouldn’t have killed himself, but jesus fucking christ people that just makes it more tragic.
Seconded. Anyone who watches that and doesn’t have some empathy for what he’s trying to do, to bring attention to the victims of Israel and the US, is seriously fucked.
I can’t find the video
people this is a video where someone burns himself to death, please only click it if you are like, okay with making the decision to see that. If you want to watch him talk and not see him die, he puts the camera down before he, y'know, does it. I'm not trying to upset people by sharing this, but I do think it is important that the video is available
I found it in this article linked here
it is not extremely visually graphic since it has been blurred, but you can definitely hear the agony, so
Jesus Christ maybe it’s cuz I just did my estrogen injection but I’m fucking sobbing
It’s fucking horrible to see a man driven to this point by guilt in complicity
God we must end this genocide or be judged without remorse for our sins
It’s not just you :(
I saw the news hours ago but it finally hit me and I can’t stop thinking about it or sleep
I haven’t even seen the video yet
Shit is so fucking bleak no words can express how fucking bleak it all is
I’m really sorry if I should have maybe just PMed the video the the other person, I thought about it, but I thought that it would be better to not like, hide it? idk. but yeah. I blamed it on being on a little adderall but same, I was tearing up the entire time, and I was already upset just reading about it
Please don’t feel guilty. I am not scarred, I have seen this before. Thank you for sharing the video. I would rather have him in my memory than not. Plus, it’s not like the video is unlabeled or without a description that can be read before clicking the link. It’s more hard to process the pain I get from empathizing with his mental state tbh
Shout out to the cop who just kept pointing their gun at him as he fell to the ground. Just in case he was going to jump back up as a fast zombie or something.
“I don’t know what’s happening, but I want to shoot someone.”
yeah I posted that
my dude screams in agony and still somehow managed to yell one last Free Palestine before it became too much.
fucking hell man
Removed by mod
i thought you were talking about them calling me a loser for a second and I was about to be upset 😔
The uncensored video is easily found
Support the troop
Hey?! What about dorner?
Back the blue (singular)
Dude used ideology as a mask to justify killing the family of the dude who represented him in his trial. The downed officers were incidental.
Incidentally super cool
True
In the words of the man himself
“Keep calm and chive on”
all troops are bastards always
all the news articles articles aren’t admitting that he was protesting the genocide in gaza.
One I read quickly mentioned him then pivoted to talking about environmentalist protesters who have self immolated in the past for over half the article. Others mention no motive at all and are just a couple sentences. One said “it’s unclear if this is related to Israel’s military action in Gaza”.
Goddamn I hate “journalists”. Lying hacks who take clear and easy to understand events and twist them into nothingness
Holy fuck, amerikkkan journalism is pure fucking propaganda, usa today’s article says “Local and Federal officials have declined to say whether this was a form of protest”
It’s not even the first one. This is the second, recent, self immolation outside an Israeli embassy in the US
Uh, fact check finds this one FALSE, the other one was outside an Israeli consulate, not an embassy. Sorry, Kiddo.
Nah he lit himself on fire because he was feeling cold
The balls of u$a propaganda…
Guy who self-immolates just for no particular reason
Just heard NPR report this as “His reason for doing so is still unknown.” How? He said why he was doing it!
He literally screamed his reasons while he was burning, filthy lying libs, not an ounce of shame in them
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/25/1233810136/fire-man-israeli-embassy-washington
A man set himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy in D.C.
A man is in critical condition after setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Sunday afternoon, according to multiple law enforcement agencies.
The Air Force said the man was an active duty airman.
The U.S. Secret Service said it was responding to reports of an individual experiencing a possible medical or mental health emergency. Local police arrived around 1 p.m. ET.
The fire has since been extinguished. The Israeli Embassy in D.C. said none of its staff were injured.
Vito Maggiolo, a spokesperson for D.C. Fire and EMS, said the man has been transported to the hospital, where he has “critical life threatening injuries.”
As of Sunday evening, NPR was not able to independently verify the man’s identity or motives.
Andrew Leyden, a freelance journalist based in D.C., told NPR he saw burn marks near the Israeli Embassy’s lawn, where the embassy had placed flags to represent the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Lynn Sweet, the Washington bureau chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote on X that there was a growing police presence outside the Israeli Embassy earlier in the afternoon, including local law enforcement searching a vehicle out of “precaution.”
Posted at 6:53 PM, well after the details were available
As of Sunday evening, NPR was not able to independently verify the man’s identity or motives.
look we need atleast 12 different independent sources to prove to us that what he was saying was actually what he meant to say
And half of those sources need to be isreali
Half, I think you mean all
They are going to weaponize the traumatic footage of being burned alive to pull some bullshit, “the footage is extremely disturbing, so for the viewers’ mental wellbeing, we’ve faithfully transcribed this mentally disturbed man’s final words.” The White House transcripts cover up Biden’s brain turning into soup all the fucking time, and they’ll probably do it here too if they can’t get away with simply ignoring it.
[Unintelligble]
“We believe he’s saying ‘tree felled is stan’”
Who do you believe, your lying eyes and ears or the neutral reporters of NPR?
The concept of compassion, solidarity, and humanity are lost on liberals as genuine beliefs instead of decorative and performative slogans. They are not so much as being misleading the public as to Bushnell’s motivations; they are alien to the concepts of outrage and moral conviction.
They’re like a gangster listening to their cohort worry about not wanting anything bad to happen to a merchants shop. Yup we’re the good guys.
NPR TO THE
Someone self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta a few months back too: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/01/protester-palestine-self-immolate-atlanta-israel-consulate
i managed not to hear about that one until this one.
90% of the people in this thread are contrarian
who just want to smugly laugh to themselves about how this does nothing or he deserves it for being a troop. Like idk how anyone can see this and not just feel a sense of sadness that not only did someone die in such an excruciating way but for absolutely nothing and that nothing will change or even remember him, especially since seemingly half the people who’ll even remember this in a week’s time are saying he’s destined for hell because he didn’t hijack a Boeing or something and do 9/12.nah we should absolutely moneyball protest actions. it’s the same analysis that tells us adventurism is usually counter-productive to our side, and we don’t need people going out in one of the worst ways to do it because they wrongly think it’ll make a difference if it will, in fact, not make a difference.
Counterpoint if you never actualy do anything then nothing ever actualy happens.
People who argue against adventurism out of pragmatism are completely disconnected to the reality we’re losing, in fact in most ways we already lost and if you can’t do anything meaningful at least do something that will be remembered for future generations.
Just surviving is rational but not inherently more productive, those that usualy argue against adventurism are also not doing any other form of praxis either. I think it is fine to argue back and forth on whether its productive or not, but at the same time it is so hard not to be cynical and note the western left doesn’t do anything period, so it is just hypocritical in the end from the perspective of a western left that is completely inert and disorganized.
you need support of the community, like the irl community where you’re going to be violent to get away with it and have it not totally undermine the thing we want.
actually blowing up a pipeline would turn people against environmentalism better than years of propaganda ever could
the mckinley assassination lead directly to the creation of the FBI
regardless of how adventurous your adventure is you need some way for the action to lead to some outcome and the last time i can think of that happening in the US is the fucking weather underground getting a cop statue removed from a public park.
And like don’t we need a strong vanguard party before making any moves? The christofascists will happily take over any revolutionary movement. Adventurism is decades away from being something to even consider.
I’ve been thinking and, like… Adventurism bad, definitely, but is it possible our definition of it is way too open-ended? I’m starting to think, like, there’s tons of violent and extreme things that led to and fed into mass movements, people didn’t just get told they had to do things for Communism, they actually achieved small victories and obtained goals through many means like strikes that could turn violent or huge sit-ins. I’m beginning to doubt that the Russian Revolution happened just because a bunch of people passed out fliers advertising the vanguard. Even if they did, I don’t think it would work in our current environment, because at least in the imperial core, people are too locked into the exact kind of rationality that tells us not to do adventurism to do anything.
Like the same impulse to label the idea of smashing in a boss’ windows (don’t do this actually or anything I mention, I’m just trying to think out loud here) “adventurism” is fundamentally the same impulse as the people who get angry over people blockading highways or whatever. It’s all about not rocking the boat or risking oneself for maximum gain, but it’s looking like we aren’t getting any gain no matter what.
I’m beginning to think pretty much no mass movement started with nonviolent organization
Anybody reading, please don’t do anything hasty, this is theoretical discussion. I am not joking or making a cheeky nod- I genuinely don’t know what I’m talking about and am trying to understand
We could get very far with just food banks and free after school childcare and things like that. The Russian Revolution wasn’t thoroughly compromised by glowies and a surveillance state. Crimes are not feasible in 2024.
We could get very far with just food banks and free after school childcare and things like that
Yeah which kicks ass and unfortunately no one does grrr
The Russian Revolution wasn’t thoroughly compromised by glowies and a surveillance state. Crimes are not feasible in 2024.
Yeah that checks out
Honestly, I don’t know. It’s possible that violent direct action in the tradition of American civil disobedience would be popular. Burn down a bomb factory when nobody’s there to get injured, stuff like that. People felt inspired by pulling down racist statues in 2020 and that practice spread widely even though those wins are solely symbolic. The problem is that these things are difficult. If property damage type “adventurism” was easy, individual-scale, and not too risky, it might be something that atomized Americans would take to. On the right we have stochastic terrorism, because doing a mass shooting of random innocents doesn’t take much planning. But that’s incompatible with leftism, and besides it’s the product of well-funded right-wing media and not a self-sustaining movement. I also doubt that, even if the American consumer could somehow do leftist adventurism on a whim, that that would be able to grow into the eventual mass movement we need for lasting change.
I also do think that like, a strike or protest that turns violent isn’t adventurism. Yes if it’s a small cadre that planned to fuck shit up, but not if it’s just cops attacking peaceful events as usual.
by ML/M way of thinking yeah. anarchists presumably have a different framework for how to get from here to there but i’ve never seen a case study of it on the level of the BPP.
i think some small-time adventurism is viable in the west today, maybe a mob going after a slumlord, but not anything that fundamentally threatens the state.
It’s obviously sad and very disturbing, and should be the kind of thing that wakes people up. Unfortunately, the US media is very careful on downplaying/misreporting self-immolations, even though in theory it’s the type of macabre story that they’d capitalize on.
Soon from the US media: “We need to ban all images from Gaza so young people don’t hurt themselves!”
“We must accelerate the development of the empathy-disabling brain chip”
I think it’s treated similar to suicides where giving them certain kinds of publicity causes a predictable uptick in suicide rates. How it took them so long to start applying the same standards to mass shooters, I’ll never know.
Remember when they had kill ranking boards for mass killers on CNN? Like it was a contest?
No I don’t. What the fuck?
This won’t make any headlines. A monk in Tibet? Plastered everywhere. People throwing paint or soup or whatever on art? Everywhere, drives the chuds rage. But they’ll hardly mention this.
Only good AmeriKKKan soldier.
But seriously this is based AF. No matter his faith, may Allah reward his compassion and bravery in the afterlife
Any journalist that does not publish this or completly ignore his reason is lowest propaganda creator alive. I agree that media would have gone mad with this if this was 50 years ago in Vietnam. Media became much more state controlled since. Remembering you is the least I could do noble soldier
That’s not it. It’s that people set themselves on fire in protest in DC all the time. It’s simply not noteworthy. Now, granted, the news loves to take common occurrences and make a big story out of a random one, but I guess setting yourself on fire just isn’t cool anymore. There used to be a wiki article that kept a list, but I can’t find it now. If I remember correctly it was about once a week or two.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolations
I recommend not reading that. Jesus Christ.
Lol maybe read about this guy that attempted and failed self immolation to protest affirmative action https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajiv_Goswami
I just made the mistake of watching the uncensored video. Don’t do that either.
He may have been a troop, and a single death is nothing compared to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, and maybe his action didn’t achieve anything, but we are still talking about a human life of someone who got where they are partially due to the material reality they grew up in, and of someone who in the end saw the wrongness in it all. I thus am a bit alarmed that some of the comments’ first reaction on here is to insult him.
Yeah that’s super fucked up and not to be tolerated.
Well my mom and dad made a lot of money and I’ve never needed to consider doing something like joining the military or have the audacity to be an ignorant product of my hyper-propagandized crumbling society.
That’s why I said that he got where he is partially due to the material reality he grew up in. To me every death is sad even if who died did evil, but that’s because I attribute a person’s decisions a whole lot more than just “partially” to the material reality. But I wanted to make clear that even if one doesn’t share that belief it’s still fucked up to react that way.
Doing something like that’s no small commitment, that’s for sure.
Is it just me or has self immolation gotten very frequent in the US? There was that scientist in D.C. protesting climate change, then another person in Atlanta protesting Israel.
I’m old and in my entire life it seems to me people in US setting themselves on fire as protest only became a thing recently. I can’t remember any from decades ago. I’m sure there were some but I just can’t remember a single one.
-–
Edit
This Wikipedia list starts from 2018.
United States
On 14 April 2018, David Buckel self immolated in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Shortly before lighting himself on fire he sent an email to several news outlets which included the statement “Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result—my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”
Wynn Bruce, a climate activist from Boulder, Colorado self-immolated on the steps of the Supreme Court of the United States on Earth Day, 22 April 2022. On 28 March 2022, he made a Facebook post stating “This is not humor. It is all about breathing” followed by “Clean air matters.”
On 1 December 2023, a protester self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta and was hospitalized in “critical condition” for severe burns. A security guard trying to stop the act was also burned on the wrist and leg. The protester had draped herself in a Palestinian flag, and police indicated her actions were in response to the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.
On February 25, 2024, a man who identified himself as an active-duty U.S. Air Force officer self-immolated outside of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., protesting Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip during the Israel–Hamas war. The man filmed the protest and livestreamed it on Twitch, and recorded as he walked up to the Israeli Embassy, saying “I will no longer be complicit in genocide, … I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest.” When the man arrived at the embassy gates, he set his phone down to film himself dousing his body in a clear liquid from a metal bottle. He then lit himself on fire while shouting “Free Palestine”.
Nah a bunch of Americans did it during Vietnam war. Unlike Thich Quang Duc, none of them worked with other people to get anything out of their sacrifice and so they are forgotten. When he self-immolated there was a whole protest planned around it and they invited press. The Americans are all doing it as horrible alienated acts of desperation.
This guy might get some news time because he uploaded a video and wore his uniform, but I don’t think it’ll be worth it. Another war death.
edit: Watched the video. Maybe it will galvanize Americans who already disapprove of the genocide. RIP Aaron.
Unlike Thich Quang Duc, none of them worked with other people to get anything out of their sacrifice and so they are forgotten. When he self-immolated there was a whole protest planned around it and they invited press. The Americans are all doing it as horrible alienated acts of desperation.
Yep, the dude had an entire congregation of monks and he self-immolated knowing the religious significance of it, which dovetails nicely with the self-immolation being a protest against religious persecution.
The Americans are all doing it as horrible alienated acts of desperation.
typical tbh
tbf there is I guess a non-survival bias here where presumably anyone who would attempt to work with others to self immolate is talked out of it.
I counted 29 Americans on the list of notable self immolations. A significant portion of them are against the Vietnam war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolations
“The Deluge” predicts a near future where climate activists start setting themselves on fire outside of 5 star restaurants by the dozens at a time.
