Connecticut (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Despondence, mixed with commitment, courage, and action, can be a starter for epochal change. Aaron Bushnell set himself afire on Sunday, a telling decision by a serving USAF airman, saying that he refused to be complicit in the Gaza genocide. His martyrdom could well make such a contribution as developments evolve in the geopolitical realm.
Headlines by most mainstream media outlets were close to identical. They skipped words such as “Gaza,” “Palestine,” or “genocide”—even though Bushnell used precisely such words in his final statement. Some outlets, CNN for example, did narrate his final words (at least in one of their reports).
But, unlike the media treatment of a similar self-immolation in Atlanta some three months ago, this incident was so well-spread on social media that the mainstream was forced to provide coverage.
Self-immolation, as the ultimate form of protest, is a sign and expression of individual and collective powerlessness against the controlling systems—even in the so-called democratic societies. And history tells us that, more often than not, it has had a significant impact on the prevalent political climate.
The 1963 self-immolation in Saigon of the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc became a turning point in the collapse of the Diem regime. That photo, showing hundreds of other monks surrounding the city square so Quang Duc could complete his protest, is now part of humanity’s photo gallery.
During the American war on Vietnam, there were several US citizens who gave the same sacrifice in protest. Norman Morrison is perhaps the most well-known.
Morrison’s self-immolation took place soon after President Johnson’s authorization of napalm in Vietnam. He set himself ablaze at the Pentagon, underneath the window of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who himself acknowledged that “Norman R. Morrison … burned himself to death within 40 feet of my Pentagon window.” (Morrison was likely not aware of this fact.)
In his 1995 book (In Retrospect: The Tragedy in Lessons of Vietnam), McNamara acknowledged the effect of Morrison’s sacrifice:
“It was an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth.
“I reacted to the horror of his action by bottling up my emotions and avoided talking about them with anyone—even with my family. I knew Marge and our three children shared many of Morrison’s feelings about the war. And I believed I understood and shared some of his thoughts. The episode created tension at home that only deepened as the criticism of the war continued to grow.”
And then we are aware that the “Arab Spring” began when Mohamed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire as an act of protest against the autocratic regime.
An extreme protest from Airman Aaron Bushnell points to the sentiment within a certain segment of the US military. That sentiment can simply not be ignored.
Negating the system-induced powerlessness, and asserting his freedom, Bushnell expressed his conviction in a social media message just before his final act in this world:
“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.”
Set ablaze by the despair of the all-encompassing repression in our world, Bushnell leaves behind a flickering hope that we humans can decide to change in this world.
Perhaps he is counting on you and me to live, and carry forward the flame!
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Azam Saeed is author of bestseller Radical Revolution of Values .
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