Same poor souls are feeling so hopeless about the genocide that they are burning themself alive. Meanwhile politicians and billionares are laughing and feasting.
But we gave Palestine a table to sit at in the UN! /s
I wonder if the cops threatened this guy with their weapons while he burned to death like they did that other poor soul.
This is the second third one. Here’s the second:
On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old serviceman of the United States Air Force, died after setting himself on fire outside the front gate of the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. Immediately before the act… Bushnell said that he was protesting against “what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers” and declared that he “will no longer be complicit in genocide”
OP’s article not only discusses Aaron Bushnell but also points out that this is in fact the third.
Holding a Palestinian flag, a female protester also self-immolated outside an Israeli consulate building in Atlanta in December, in what US police described as “an extreme act of political protest.”
The fact there have been two is astounding to me. Im sincerely interested in the psychology behind this. What would lead to this with such a horrific outcome?
But suicide by self immolation because of it?
Why? What drives a person to do that?
If you’re willing to die for the cause, why not immolate the Israeli consul for example?
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
When a revolutionary speaks truth and justice to sheep they hate them for it. The sheep want the convenient, short term comfort of bandwagon safety. They’ll readily sacrifice their shallow moral and ethical principles to defend this feeling. They’ll viscously attack all who disturb it.
Some of us commit our lives to the fight for future lives of dignity. Some communicate with words, some with actions, and many with both. But, words are increasingly meaningless: Our semantic appropriated, reading comprehension taking a nose dive, attention spans less than a minute, human communication itself corrupted in capitalization of technology.
Aaron Bushnell killed himself to communicate with you. It’s not horrific. It’s what’s necessary.
And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men … trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love … but they had the strength … the strength … to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly.
I wanted to come back to this because it’s important. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1233985097/self-immolation-political-protesters-history-aaron-bushnell
Finally, a method of protesting that truly reflects the situation.
This kind of protest only works if the political class possess empathy, instead of being the most corrupt and narcissistic puppets the plutocracy can muster.
No, it isn’t for them. It’s to bring attention to the subject and have other people pay attention, and hopefully rise up and demand change. The political class will do what’s convenient. It’s up to everyone else to make the most convenient choice the moral choice.
Seeing someone choose to die in what must be the most painful way possible indicates there must be some reason they feel so strongly. It then forces anyone paying even a little attention to confront what that reason is (assuming they did their messaging g well). Once they confront it, the hope is that they feel even a fraction of the conviction of these brave people.
Edit: I want to add, if you feel like taking this extreme action, make sure it’s truly the best option. There are so many ways to make your message heard and I’m doubtful this is the most useful. There are groups who could use your time/knowledge/conviction/money who are trying to creating change.
Problem is the American people being openly in favor of genocide, as long as their team is the one committing the genocide. This includes the “progressives” you find here on lemmy, arguing that it is okay to vote for genocide because the Reps would do more genocide.
The American people, and many other people in the world (Germany, UK, France…) are complicit.
Remember when self-emolition was so insane that it hit page 1? Now you barely even hear about it online at all.
