US soldier dies after self-immolation

[DecisionFatigue]

I don’t know if there has already been a thread about this but I’ve just seen his last message/video and his cries and I just feel so exasperated that it’s come to this. Sources say he was a very proud airman and noted as being “top of the class” but he could no longer be complicit.

The Burning Monk obviously comes to mind, who changed the course of history forever. I hope this man’s actions and subsequent death won’t be in vain.

RIP Aaron Bushnell

I don’t consider it a noble sacrifice - just not necessarily an irrational act or an act through mental illness.

I’m too young to remember but were Bobby Sands and the fellow hunger strikers considered mentally ill when they died? That’s a genuine question because I don’t know the answer - every documentary etc I’ve seen suggests they weren’t considered mentally unwell. Is it the method that marks Aaron Bushnell apart?

There are people on here talking about what he did as if it was a noble sacrifice for a cause.

I too am against suicide but I think the state of the world where we see genocide on our screens everyday armed and financed by his own government is enough to disturb the balance of mind of most people with a heart

Sigh. In a comment right on this page is a response from an anarchy group that Aaron Bushnell emailed his last message too and they’ve confirmed it came from him, apparently. They claim an online post says he was a good anarchist. I am done arguing with a conspiracy theorist. I have succeeded in not getting dragged into any long-winded discussions about Palestine (I’m sure everyone agrees what’s happening in Gaza is terrible), and I will not do so now. Good evening, all.

Silly man .

Self immolation has not "had a huge impact" in the past. I can't think of one instance where it changed anything, including the famous instance of the Buddist monk who made headlines in 1963. He was protesting the treatment of Buddists by his government. Nothing changed.

There is no glory in suicide. It is a profoundly selfish, self-centered act that devastates those left behind and accomplishes nothing. Please do not glorify that.

Bushnell's act will change exactly nothing about the course of the Israel-Hamas war. It is a tragedy, nothing more.

@Caravaggiouch makes a good point to imagine the act being done in the name of a different cause and one you don't personally believe in.

If I heard someone did this extreme act to protest against abortion or gender identity, I wouldn't assume the person was mentally ill. I'm fact, anti abortion protestors have been driven (by their convictions) to murder doctors, which they seem to think is justified.

Self-immolation is a horrific and extreme form of protest that doesn't involve killing other people. It's disturbing and the temptation is to explain it away as mental illness.

He left root beers to his friend as inheritance and set himself on fire. He was obviously very mentally unwell. Agreeing with his cause doesn’t make this suddenly an act of martyrdom. He very very likely wouldn’t have done it unless psychologically troubled

Horrible extreme and irrational thing to do. Extremism and religious intolerance and hatred is at the root of too much conflict. Especially in Israel.
Not something to cheer for!

There are really good reasons why the media shouldn't have saturation coverage of this event, romanticise it, or imply it tells us something about the conflict in Gaza.

I feel very sorry for this young man. I don't want others to copy him.

And no, self-immolation has never brought positive social change.

I think some people underestimate how distressing it is for lots of people right now to watch what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza. To know that their government is complicit in the mass killing and starvation of civillians. I wouldn't be surprised if the poor man felt he was going mad, its bizarre to witness what is happening, to see video evidence of children being purposefully starved and nobody is doing anything to stop it, in fact the opposite is happening countries like the US and the UK have withdrawn aid and are actively helping the Israeli government to starve them.

Apparently he was on active duty as a drone pilot setting up targets for the IDF. US and Uk forces are involved in assisting the IDF in this way.
Perhaps he felt that he could not live with that.

Link

x.com/anthonyzenkus/status/1762391394453254601?s=61&t=RxZkCT_ulRY5RPDXN5Oqiw

The guy was obviously seriously mentally ill. I feel so sorry for his family.

I think it is very different from being a suicide bomber.
I think it is very sad, whatever the rights and wrongs.

My take alway from that is mental health is a crisis and religious cults have a lot to answer for.

I’ll probably not even remember in a couple of years time what he was allegedly protesting about, just that he was a young man who must have been in a whole lot of pain mentally.

"Incredible"?! The opposite actually - he was mentally ill. Would you call a person jumping from a building incredible too?

Someone else could have been hurt, it's absurd that he's being lauded by some. No one of sane mind would set themselves on fire for any cause.

Who knows what he may have seen, heard, done. I think it's important to be sensitive to the grief of his family and friends. Also not to judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes. I would agree that the suffering in Gaza, particularly of children, has been almost unbearable to witness. I long for it to stop, every day. I think Charlotte Church is right and that we are all connected on some level, so that nobody is free unless we all are free. I don't find this young man's grief for Gaza hard to understand, though I wish, like others, that he had not felt driven to it. He was young, idealistic, brave and loved by people who must be hurting right now, so I hope people will write their thoughts with kindness and compassion.

@stormy4319trevor beautiful words

Very different response from many MNers than there would have been if he had been brown.

I think the media have it the time it needed , very little . Unless the discussed issue is poor mental health then I see no point in making this news . It’s a tragedy, from someone very disturbed

Really? Surely Palestinian genocide won't just be forgotten in a couple of years time.

Perhaps he didn’t mean to die:-

“Jack Downey, a professor of religious studies at the University of Rochester who researches self-immolation protests, says there has always been a question about whether self-immolation is such an extreme form of protest that it distracts from the protest's message.
He said some news reports as far back as the 1960s about self-immolators, such as Quaker protester Norman Morrison who set himself on fire outside the Pentagon in 1965 to speak out against the Vietnam War, have tended to pathologize the protesters and imply they were mentally ill.
"On one hand, that's understandable, because it's kind of hard to imagine a more extreme act," Downey said.
But he notes that it is also a way for viewers to avoid wrestling with the content of the protest itself — and how bad conditions must be to drive someone to such extreme lengths.”

No one seems to give a fuck about Muslims being killed. Unless they’re being killed by Jews.