The Immolation of Aaron Bushnell

Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.

Aaron Bushnell’s final message on Facebook.

I think it’s important to allow oneself to feel. And while it’s never pleasant witnessing another person’s pain, turning away is a temptation we should resist. The danger we face isn’t in feeling whatever we feel, it’s in numbing ourselves to what is real.

The video Aaron Bushnell live-streamed of his self-immolation before the Israeli embassy was removed from Twitch and replaced with a message explaining that it violated the platform’s guidelines.

Most news outlets with access to the video overlaid the image of a man in flames with a blurry rectangle, or panned away as the critical moment approaches. It’s similar to the treatment given to the images coming out of Gaza most likely to make us feel something. If they get past the IDF censor, they’re sanitized. Our horror is titrated. Retain our attention long enough to shove another ad at us, but not so long that we resolve to take action.

So today I want to tarry on the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell. Don’t rush off! I know, I know... when you ask someone to do something psychologically difficult they suddenly have a million other priorities that simply must be attended to. But it’s important that we not look away.

There’s a fine line between seeing oneself as a passive observer and an active participant. I guess we each draw the line in a different place. But in a sense, this time the line has been drawn for us. Many Americans are coming to the realization that decades of American policy and the actions of the Biden administration have made us complicit. We’re participants in ethnic cleansing and genocide whether we like it or not.

I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit to genocide. I am 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.
—Aaron Bushnell

Bushnell links his extreme act to that sense of complicity. We infer that he sees no viable remedy, no political strategy, no avenue for change, no alternative. His final desperate act is also a protest against a ruling class that dictates the limits of acceptable discourse, that is capable of manufacturing consent even for genocide.

To think that that’s the best you can do! To imagine that Americans, seemingly sanguine over the killing of nearly 30,000 Palestinians, will care about your solitary death. Your voluntary death. Your deliberated death. Your painful and premeditated death. I don’t know.

The Secret Service agents furiously barking for Bushnell to “Get on the ground!” and the one pointing his pistol at him... it’s like they don’t know what to do with him. I’m not sure we do, either. We don’t have a convenient category for Bushnell.‌‌ The Secret Service is prepared for violence, and for dealing with people whose fear of death makes them manageable. Pointing your gun at someone who’s prepared to die is an impotent act. They’re already a step ahead of you.

Maybe it does cause people to reflect—no doubt, that’s the rationale underlying self-immolation. It brings that distant suffering home. But not the way terrorism does, by targeting innocent victims.

Some people are implying that Bushnell was mentally disturbed, that he was weak-willed and succumbed to the vicissitudes of life, but none of that rings true. The video suggests he was clear-headed and committed, as he quickly but methodically positioned his camera, doused himself with an accelerant, and set himself on fire.

He wanted us to witness that final, horrifying act. Not the blurred version, not the quick cut, not the appropriately solemn tone of the voice over.

I think it’s important to respect that.

The media doesn’t have to do that much blurring when the audience is determined not to look. There’s censorship, and then there’s self censorship, a censoring of the emotions, a numbing, a turning away, a sudden willingness to be distracted.

I will not glorify it. But neither will I ignore it.