On Sunday, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, live-streamed himself walking up to the gates of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and announced that he was going to engage in an act of protest intended to end what he saw as his complicity in the “genocide” of Palestinians. Bushnell then doused himself in accelerant and set himself on fire. He shouted, “Free Palestine!” as he became engulfed in flames, and then he began to scream. He died of his injuries that night.
The video, which was removed by the streaming network Twitch for violating its policies, is extremely disturbing. Even when watching a heavily blurred out version of the video on X, I alternated between crying and averting my eyes.
Bushnell’s death has sparked a fierce debate online, with some people describing his death as ipso facto proof that he was “mentally ill,” and a subset of them rejecting the very idea that a suicidal action could ever constitute a “legitimate form of protest.” Bushnell’s actions, according to this view, should not be seen as a political gesture, but only as a “cry for help.”
As horrifying and heart-breaking as Bushnell’s death was, he called it a protest, and we ought not dismiss that.
Most of these comments appear well intentioned. Even as reporting on Bushnell’s past comes out, we can never fully ascertain the state of his mind in his final days and moments, and whether he was experiencing some kind of acute mental health problems that warranted medical treatment. And given that Bushnell’s death by suicide could inspire copycat actions, there’s a concern, one that I share, that others distressed by the Israel-Hamas war or other global issues might take their lives, too.
But as horrifying and heart-breaking as Bushnell’s death was, he called it a protest, and we ought not dismiss that. To do so would mean dismissing the more than 1,000-year-history of self-immolation as an extreme form of objection and dissent all over the world. Mental health distress, if that was an issue for Bushnell, would not mean he was not participating in that old and disturbing practice.
A 2012 New Yorker report captures self-immolation’s many appearances across history: During the Roman Empire, persecuted Christians deliberately burned themselves alive as they set fire to the palace of their oppressors. In the 1600s, thousands of Russian Old Believers of the Orthodox Church locked themselves in churches that they then set on fire in response to government-ordered reforms. Tibetan monks sat in pyres as far back as the 4th century, first for spiritual reasons, but then, according to The New Yorker, for political ones too, including “to protest declining patronage from the ruling classes or to lament invasions.” Since 2009, over 100 Tibetans have reportedly self-immolated to protest Chinese rule of their homeland.
The best-known self-immolation in human history may be that of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who sat down in a street intersection in Saigon in 1963 and set himself afire to object to the suppression of the U.S.-backed government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Duc’s act was immortalized on Rage Against the Machine’s debut album cover. His erect posture while sitting cross-legged, appearing to be half-human and half-fire, is one of the most powerful symbols of desperation, conscientious objection and rage that exists in the history of human images.
Self-immolations have historically been interpreted as politically meaningful. The Quaker antiwar activist Norman Morrison’s decision to set himself afire outside the office of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1965 changed the intensity and repertoire of actions of the antiwar movement, and McNamara later cited the horrifying event as one that shaped his changing views of the Vietnam War. During this century, the Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation is often credited with sparking the Arab Spring — and the use of self-immolation as a protest tactic in the region. Then-President Barack Obama described the event as a consequential act: “There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years.” Also in December, in response to what’s been happening in Gaza, a woman set herself on fire in front of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta in what police there described as an act of “extreme political protest.”
The long history of self-immolation as dissent doesn’t mean those who set themselves on fire are unaffected by acute mental distress or mental illness. But it is glib and ahistorical to ascribe self-immolation to abject madness, and to claim that a specifically chosen act with a specific history doesn’t count as “legitimate” protest.
We still have more to learn about Bushnell’s life and final days, but his activist peers describe him as exceptionally principled. He was immersed in left-wing and anarchist spaces and activism and reportedly had plans to further immerse himself in political activism. According to The Washington Post, less than two weeks before he died, Bushnell and a friend “talked by phone about their shared identities as anarchists and what kinds of risks and sacrifices were needed to be effective.” Before he took his life, Bushnell wrote an email to reporters explaining his act, and he left a will. We can’t know what kind of inner turmoil he may have been experiencing, but evidence indicates that his political convictions were real.
Bushnell's act made me feel deeply, deeply sad. I wish that he — a seemingly bright and ambitious and well-liked young man — had not done what he did. I wish instead that he had continued to use his life to fight against oppression. I desperately hope nobody else follows in his footsteps. That doesn’t make his call for us to bear witness and to act to avert extraordinary human tragedy any less meaningful.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.
