We Used To Care About People Like Aaron Bushnell
"...Norman Morrison, a 32-year-old pacifist...an 82-year-old woman named Alice Herz burned [themselves] to death...A remarkable change in sentiment took place." - Howard Zinn, 'A People's History...'
CW: suicide, self-immolation, genocide, uncaring genocidaires
Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!
Cotton Xenomorph’s “Cryptids and Climate Change” issue continues, with Adrian Sobol’s “Plume” haunting our literary Nostromo. Go get plumed!
You’re gonna have to wait seven days to read the “how do we measure success as writers” post I’d basically finished. Guess I get next week off.
On Sunday, an active duty US airman, Aaron Bushnell, self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy. His last words were “Free Palestine.”
People who knew him have described Aaron as friendly and gregarious. Always smiling. “He’s always trying to think about how we can actually achieve liberation for all with a smile on his face,” as his friend Errico said. Some people have wondered if Aaron was mentally ill, which is the US establishment’s boilerplate when someone does something they don’t understand.
A huge number of white men have committed increasingly gruesome mass shootings, and their whole internet history was posts and research topics about how much they hated (insert marginalized group) and how women were the cause of all their problems? Who knows why they shot 45 people at a church. Must’ve been mentally ill.
Self-immolation is a tactic that comes from a place of fierce conviction. A belief that calling attention to whatever you’re protesting through sacrificing your body—and I do view it as self-sacrifice rather than mutilation or even suicide—whatever injustice is happening, you are morally on the right side. A belief that it will matter to people who make decisions to see you set yourself ablaze. Self-immolation is for when you’ve reached your last resort and then gone past it. Howard Zinn talks about people who self-immolated in response to various colonial injustices in A People’s History a lot. I’m certain Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz mentions it, probably Four Hundred Souls, too. This sort of thing used to ring out, used to give people pause.
Today, if you ask the mainstream media, you’d wonder why Aaron did it. Oh, did something happen in Palestine? Huh. Oh, people are upset about it? Weird. New York Times, Washington Post—well, their main business is addicting phone games and laundering fascist talking points to Latte Liberals. They’re not going to report the real reason Aaron self-immolated. Disappointedly, NPR was most shameful with this, here captured by Kendra Pierre-Louis:
An hour later, they updated with this:
But go read Juliana Kim’s reporting right now and you won’t see a correction.
I’m writing this on Monday, and I will not be updating before Wednesday. None of these news organizations get to live down their moment of cowardice. Aaron and his reasons were all over social media as the shit was going down. Everyone who had supported the US government’s funding of Israel’s genocide had a moment to ask “are we the baddies,” and too many places did not even consider meeting that moment. Hey, maybe now’s a good time to mention someone else has already self-immolated in protest of Israel’s genocide, in Atlanta, December of last year. It took Aaron for me to learn about that, and I know I’m not the only one.
Instead of reflection, we have news orgs doing the “we’re just so baffled why anyone is upset” routine. We have people saying Aaron was mentally ill. We have people accusing Aaron of excusing terrorism.
Now, I’m not gonna do the macho one-upping, the “we all need to be out there, throwing bricks, fighting cops, self-immolating our own selves, man.” This is not a call to go out there and dick-measure against Aaron’s ashes. Radical action comes in many shapes and forms. Sometimes rebellion is self-immolation. Sometimes rebellion is quiet quitting, or not letting your boss telling you what to do with your hair. Sometimes rebellion is standing on a picket line yourself, with your own body. Sometimes rebellion is an encouraging note to your kid’s teacher when the teacher’s union is about to go on strike.
But what we’re not gonna do is sit here and act like Aaron and his action didn’t matter. We are going to honor Aaron Bushnell, we are going to say “FREE PALESTINE” because it is the correct moral opinion to have, and we are going to reflect on tactics. I watched HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE this weekend (it rules). A few hours later, Aaron Bushnell self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy.
Maybe that’s the juxtaposition to end on. I’m not going to blow up a pipeline or self-immolate in front of the Israeli embassy. There’s a wife who loves me and a five-year-old who depends on me for almost everything in the next room. My role is writer, and this blog means I get to chose what to write about. No editors except the nightmares that live in my brain.
So here’s what I’ll write: remember Aaron Bushnell. Honor his action. Spend time thinking about the world we live in. Spend time thinking about your role—however small, however undramatic—in helping make a better world.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris