Not All Self-Immolations Are Made Equal

“Aaron Bushnell was not a hero or a martyr akin to the self-immolators of anti-imperial conflicts past; he was likely a mentally ill, terminally online man in his mid-20s who was in a lot of pain that he transposed onto a conflict halfway around the world that in no way personally affected him.”

On February 25, 2024, 25-year-old United States Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell shocked people around the United States and the world when he doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. This was done ostensibly to show his love for Palestinians and his desire for them to be free (indeed, he screamed “Free Palestine!” repeatedly as the flames ate away at him). The video, if one can stomach it, is a punch in the gut for anyone with a shred of conscience but not for the reasons being discussed in some corners. In many at-this-point-predictable cases, figures such as Cornel West, Chris Hedges, and Jill Stein came out to praise Bushnell’s actions as an “example,” “a religious act “of “divine violence,” and an “extraordinary sacrifice,” respectively. Senator Bernie Sanders offered a few words for the public suicide, stating that, “it [spoke] to the depths of despair that so many people are feeling now about the horrific humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza.” In general, there was no shortage of reverence from much of the self-described “anti-imperialist” (or “anti-Zionist”) Left for what Bushnell did. But his actions must have also rung familiar to anyone who has despaired at his own existence but decided not to go through with what many see as the logical conclusion of such despair.

Despite what publications such as The Nation have said, we have no reason to “take Aaron Bushnell at his word (and deed),” much less accept the historical invocations of other self-immolators as a reason to see moral nobility in Bushnell’s actions. The truth is that Bushnell was a young man mired in First World ennui that can only be cured by replacing one rabidly religious belief (namely, the Christian one from his upbringing) with another cloaked in the guise of a secular concern for human rights. Bushnell was not a hero or a martyr akin to the self-immolators of anti-imperial conflicts past; he was likely a mentally ill, terminally online man in his mid-20s who was in a lot of pain that he transposed onto a conflict halfway around the world that in no way personally affected him. This, among many other reasons, is central to why those tempted to compare Bushnell’s actions to those of other self-immolators in history ought to reconsider.

The most famous self-immolation of the 20th century was that of Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk living in South Vietnam who, like many Buddhists in that country in the 1960s, watched with growing alarm at the persecution of Buddhists at the hands of the American-backed government of Ngô Đình Diệm. This was significant because Diệm was part of the Catholic minority that held most of the power in South Vietnam. When this fact was combined with what was known as the “Buddhist crisis,” it was not difficult to conclude that there was a true, arguably impassable rift between the two religious communities. According to historian Edward Miller, “the crisis emerged from a clash of modernizing visions,” with the Buddhist nationalist vision predating the Diệm government by several decades. In addition to this clash of nationalist visions, Miller explains, “The protests also reflected growing Buddhist anxieties about the Diệm government’s nation-building agenda for South Vietnam. By the time the crisis began, Buddhist leaders had concluded that this agenda (which Diệm referred to as the ‘Personalist Revolution’) was incompatible with their plans to realize Vietnam’s destiny as a ‘Buddhist nation’.”