#self immolation

[alwayswiselight]

One of the most horrifying videos on YouTube that appeared in my feed this week was that of US Air Force airman Aaron Bushnell immolating himself just outside the Washington DC Israeli Embassy in protest of the genocide in Gaza. Evidently, he had received orders that he would be assigned along with other US military personnel to assist the Israeli Defense Forces in their so-called war against Hamas. As he stated in his video, he preferred to take this extreme step rather than be complicit in genocide. He was only 25 years old.

Rest in peace Aaron. You are a hero. I hope that your action draws more support in the US to end this heinous slaughter of the indigenous Palestinians by their genocidal oppressors.

#aaron bushnell #protest #self immolation #palestine #free palestine #gaza #israel #free gaza #gaza strip #genocide #current events

[totopopopo]

#aaron bushnell #self immolation #free palestine #abolish the police

[sugas6thtooth]

May Aaron rest in peace. His values and the legacy he leaves behind is one of humanity. Society has failed, to the point where we must go up in flames to request a natural obligation such as freedom.

#free palestine #palestine #gaza #free gaza #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #pray for palestine #aaron bushnell #self immolation #protest #activism #genocide #ceasefire #permanent ceasefire #israel #america #usa #current events

[to-dance-beneath-the-diamond-sky]

what the fuck who wrote the wikipedia page for Aaron Bushnell?!?!? what the fuck is misleading and polarizing about his statement????!?!

#Aaron Bushnell #free palestine #anti-zionism #self immolation #free palestine 🇵🇸 #free gaza #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #palestine #gaza #gaza genocide #wikipedia #palestine 🇵🇸 #🇵🇸

[alanshemper]

#self immolation #protest #washington dc #israel #palestine #500

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

Today, U.S. Air Force serviceman, Aaron Bushnell, 25, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington:

"I will no longer be complicit in genocide.”

His last words were “Free Palestine”.

#may he rest in peace #self immolation is the loudest and most desperate way to protest #RIP Aaron bushnell #this is so tragic #apparently he screamed free palestine until his body physically couldn’t produce any more words #aaron bushnell #self immolation #free palestine #palestine #gaza #gaza strip #free gaza #genocide #israel #save palestine #us army #war #protest

[fortunatefires]

After the death of Aaron Bushnell I can't stop thinking about the quote "Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. we have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible."

#It is cyclical in my mind #This is the second self immolation #We need change and we need it now #When will it fucking end #aaron bushnell #Palestine #Free palestine #free gaza #Protest #self immolation #Fire #Revolution #israel #Genocide

[intersectionalpraxis]

I am reposting this to take accountability for the egregious oversight I made on my previous post. I said "rest in peace and power," and I definitely did not intend to disrespect and de-historicize the meaning behind 'rest in power.' The Black Lives Matter movement uses this in remembrance of the Black people who have been killed by police violence and brutality, so my sincere apologies.

What Aaron is exposing and what he has done must be spoken about, especially since it concerns US complicity and violence, but definitely using appropriate words and context. Thank you to the person who pointed/called it out. I hope Aaron is resting in peace.

#feminist #social justice #free palestine #free gaza #us imperialism #us military #end the genocide #end the occupation #ceasefire now #ceasefire #united states #us politics #tw self immolation #self immolation

[is-the-fire-real]

Did we really just spend the last few months seeing people scream about bloodthirsty Jews Zionists who crave mass murder and genocide and steal Palestinian babies and eat the skins of corpses which they also steal?

Because now I see every single Jewish person I know on Tumblr spending all day begging people not to kill themselves while the pro-Palis are drawing fanart of self-immolation.

Do you want death cults? Because that's how you get death cults.

#antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #antisemitism on tumblr #self immolation #suicide mention #violence #free tumblr from hamas #blood libel #one thing cults are great at is gaslighting #another thing they're great at is DARVO #is-the-fire-real original

[a-queer-seminarian]

Thich Nhat Hanh on self-immolation

“Before the Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself alive in 1963, he meditated for several weeks and then wrote very loving letters to his government, his church, and his fellow monks and nuns explaining why he had reached that decision. When you are motivated by love and the willingness to help others attain understanding, even self-immolation can be a compassionate act. When Jesus allowed himself to be crucified, He was acting in the same way, motivated by the desire to wake people up, to restore understanding and compassion, and to save people. … When you read Thich Quang Duc’s letters, you know very clearly that he was not motivated by the wish to oppose or destroy but by the desire to communicate. When you are caught in a war in which the great powers have huge weapons and complete control of the mass media, you have to do something extraordinary to make yourself heard. Without access to radio, television, or the press, you have to create new ways to help the world understand the situation you are in. Self-immolation can be such a means. If you do it out of love, you act very much like Jesus did on the cross…”

- Vietnamese monk and Zen master Thich Naht Hanh (1926-2022) in Living Buddha, Living Christ (1995)

#self immolation #thich nhat hanh #living buddha living christ #crucifixion #protest #quote tag #thich quang duc

[tranquil-slaughterhouse]

A perfect reacting gif to despair.

#hazbin hotel #alastor #zestial #egg bois #self immolation

[ladychlo]

Literally an active-duty soldier in the US Armed Forces (Aaron Bushnell, may he rest in peace) has committed self-immolation as an act of protest against genocide in Palestine. X

He's last words were : "Today in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the US Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."

As much as the media wants you to believe that you have become desensitised to the suffering of others, Aaron's protest should spark outrage. Free Palestine.

#aaron bushnell #self immolation #made me remember how the Arab Spring started Mohamed Bouazizi’s self immolation as an act of heroic protest #sparked a whole revolution #free palestine #gaza

[totopopopo]

i keep typing and then deleting a post about self immolation as an act cause i think some people. are kind of missing the point of it. but i also have to go to work soon and don’t have time to get all my thoughts out right now. but bottom line is. the point is to witness the point is to see the point is that it is horrific the point is your attention the point is this is one of the most brave and desperate acts it is not simply suicide and it is not an act of hopelessness it is a human giving their life to something bigger than themself in the hopes that it will make a difference it is a political statement it is a request that you look and listen and act

#i took a class on the history of violent and nonviolent protests as an undergrad and we talked a lot about self immolation and a tactic. #i learned a lot i think #but yeah. anyways this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the point i’m trying to make #self immolation #aaron bushnell #free palestine

[probablyasocialecologist]

In all, at least 100 people set themselves on fire in the US and Vietnam to protest the war. After a long history on multiple continents as a tool of protest against religious persecution—the precedent on which Quảng Đức was drawing—these self-immolations cemented a new association in American culture between the tactic and anti-war activism. In February 1991, during the first US war in Iraq, Gregory Levey doused himself in paint thinner and perished in a fireball in a park in Amherst, Massachusetts, leaving behind a small cardboard sign that read, simply, “peace.” Malachi Ritscher, an experimental musician in Chicago, set himself on fire on the side of the Kennedy expressway during the morning rush hour one Friday in November 2006, after posting a long statement on his website explaining that he felt there was no other way for him to escape complicity with the “barbaric war” the US was then waging. He had been arrested at two previous anti-war protests. Scholars often associate the rise of political self-immolation in the 1960s with the rise of television: a spectacular form of protest for the society of the spectacle. But of course there are less painful ways for protestors to attract eyeballs. The reality is that self-immolation registers the near-total impotence of protest—and even public opinion as such—in the face of a military apparatus completely insulated from external accountability. It the rawest testament to the absence of effective courses of action. When war consists primarily of unelected men in undisclosed locations pouring fire on the heads of people we will never know on the other side of the world, there is very little that ordinary people can do to arrest its progress. But we still have our bodies, and it is in the nature of fire to refuse containment. To ask whether self-immolation is good or bad, justifiable or non-justifiable, effective or ineffective is in large part to miss the point, which is that it is an option, whether anyone else likes it or not. It illuminates our powerlessness in negative space, but it also affirms the irreducible core of our freedom, that small flame of agency that no repression can extinguish. Since Aaron Bushnell’s death by self-immolation this week in protest of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, his detractors have warned about the risk of “contagion,” suggesting that his protest will encourage imitators (who, they imply, share his alleged mental instability). There may or may not be additional self-immolators before the slaughter comes to an end, just as Bushnell was preceded by a woman, yet to be identified publicly, who burned herself outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta in December. But the purpose of lighting yourself on fire is not to encourage other people to light themselves on fire. It is to scream to the world that you could find no alternative, and in that respect it is a challenge to the rest of us to prove with our own freedom that there are other ways to meaningfully resist a society whose cruelty has become intolerable.

#aaron bushnell #self immolation #palestine #israel #vietnam

[the-amazing-boop]

This is the first I'm hearing of this today so I'm waiting for news outlets to confirm his death so I'm still looking for more information.

Regardless, Aaron Bushnell, thank you for your sacrifice. Self immolation is the most severe form of protest. I'm sorry it came to this.

First, the man in Congo, now this. Every single day, I feel ill.

Edit: several reports confirm Aaron has passed. I don't know if I'll stop crying before I go to bed. I may need day to take a break and sit with this. We haven't seen this much self immolation protests documented so forwardly since Vietnam.

#aaron bushnell #u.s. military #palestine news #palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #israel #israel embassy #washington dc #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #gaza genocide #tw: death #tw: self destruction #tw: sh #self immolation #protest #congo #congo protests

[solacedeer]

Our reaction to Aaron Bushnell right now is so so so important. The powers that be don’t gaf if we burn, they showed that when they swept the person from Atlanta who did the same under the rug.

Our emotional reaction, and more importantly us EXTERNALIZING that is what will make change.

Don’t stop talking about Palestine; don’t stop talking about Aaron Bushnell the American Airforce pilot, who stood in front of the Israeli Embassy and Announced to the world that he would not be complicit in Genocide.

I’ll emphasize that we have to be loud; whatever you’re doing do More and do so externally, do so In your community where ever you can. At this point maintaining the status Quo IS complicit

[im mostly saying this as an American because our countries name is on the bombs]

#free palestine #palestine #free gaza #don’t stop talking about palestine #aaron bushnell #self immolation #i don’t know if this makes sense. We need to MAKE it mean something more then it already does.