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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3169 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 25, 2024

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A US Airman lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy.In the video while he walked to the gate, he explained that he is protesting the actions of Israel. As he burned, he yelled, "Free Palestine". He is now dead. Two questions from me about the incident:

  • Why would anyone expect these kinds of stunts work at all? I would expect that this only generates sympathy from people that are already on your side. For a neutral observer, I don't get how it generates sympathy. For a committed opponent, I don't understand being disappointed that your adversaries are literally killing themselves. Is the efficacy purely in generating pressure from international media that wanted to pick that side anyway?

  • How the hell do we have soldiers that are suicidally committed to opposing American allies? Seems bad.

It's depression and suicidal ideations first, rationalisations later.

They found his reddit account where he posted pretty heavily. From what I've read it's very standard reddit politics (ACAB, socialism, white privilege). Not sure if it would be against the rules to link it. He doesn't seem noticeably more extreme than anyone else on reddit, could be any of a million other people where you'd roll your eyes at their dumb take and move on. It's weird to read through the posts of somebody who just burned himself to death, he just seems so normal.

Not sure if it's against the rules to link it here but you can find it by googling "Aaron Bushnell reddit account". I assume they'll nuke it soon.

Honestly surprised me that somebody with his interests actually did something in the real world, especially something so grandiosely self-destructive. Big From Software game enthusiast.

Why the hell should it be against the rules? Username is acebush1.

I think you’re understating how radical this dude was.

Why would anyone expect these kinds of stunts work at all? I would expect that this only generates sympathy from people that are already on your side.

I've seen this comment about this incident a lot this week. While I agree it's extremely unlikely to achieve anything, and probably the product of a disordered and frustrated mind -- but there is one extraordinarily successful case study here. Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation in 2010 directly inspired the revolution in Tunisia, and then Egypt, and subsequently the entire Arab Spring. And within living memory.

I think this is just proving Matty Yglesias' point that a lot of these tactics are a product of cargo cult thinking., based on glamorous past wins.

There's a massive difference between a repressive dictatorship with a deep well of discontentment that needs a spark and a faraway democracy where many people don't care, and many only give a shit in terms of how it plays into their existing (narcissistic) culture war.

Imagine roasting yourself because of a basic category error.

Were those not people already on his side?

I guess the point is that it can be a trigger-point to activate people on your side. I'm just unclear what that's supposed to look like in this case. Were I an Israeli or anyone that has any sway over Israeli politics, I would be fine with Israel's enemies simply lighting themselves on fire.

I wouldn't say this airman's situation is anything like Bouazizi's. But the Tunisian example at least sets an upper bound for what's possible, which is quite a lot. And I would give self-immolation more of a chance of success than, say, standing on highways or throwing paint on the Mona Lisa.

He probably had that Buddhist monk who self-immolated in the 1960s in mind. This picture was in my high school history textbook, and I remember him being portrayed as stunning and brave.

He’s also not the only man to set himself on fire for dubious reasons recently. Some guy did it on SCOTUS’s front steps two years ago to protest climate change. It seems like the sort of thing that could be memed into greater popularity given the right conditions.

Well it was stunning and brave. That seems pretty inarguable.

God would it be nice if people just set themselves on fire instead of shooting up a Church.

I think he was crazy, disillusioned, and drank the complaints in the water.

Why would anyone expect these kinds of stunts work at all?

  1. Understanding pacifism without reference to religion makes it illogical, for fairly obvious reasons. The mahatma didn't tell WWII Jews to throw themselves on the butcher's knives or off of cliffs because it would be effective, he told them to do so because it was divinely ordained that it should be so and would reward them in the next life. It's quite likely that a man who chooses to light himself on fire is not doing so primarily in reference to the effectiveness of doing so on others, but out of a sense that his own virtue will only be satisfied by lighting himself on fire. He didn't do it for the win, he did it for his own soul.

  2. It sure got a lot of attention. I'm sure we could play with the utility numbers and say that the QALYs he lost lighting himself on fire achieved more media attention than twice the QALYs spent on sane protests by masses of people.

How the hell do we have soldiers that are suicidally committed to opposing American allies? Seems bad.

How the hell do we have allies that our soldiers are suicidally committed to opposing? Seems bad.

How the hell do we have allies that our soldiers are suicidally committed to opposing? Seems bad.

This seems much more explicable to me! If I thought our allies were so evil that it was virtuous to self-immolate in opposition to them, I would simply not join the American military. I don't understand the impulse to join the military if you think Israel needs to be opposed at the suicidal extreme.

I'm probably just overthinking it and the guy was simply suicidal though.

Unless he just enlisted I'm not sure your point holds. Sticking here with the view that Israel is Evil:

This time last year, Evil Israel was (at worst) the 90s LAPD from an NWA album with an air force. In Gaza, Evil Israel is (at best) killing civilians every single day. Things have changed significantly.

Evil Israel was (at worst) the 90s LAPD from an NWA album with an air force.

Pretty much all of the most serious anti-zionist claims were exactly the same this time last year.

Claims may have been similar, but they weren't, you know, actively doing it on TikTok every day.

Protip: to get your soldiers referred to as “murdered civilians” in the press, simply don’t have uniforms.

Israel is definitely killing civilians in Gaza. There's no evidence that they're killing more civilians than can be expected given the whole "ground invasion of a densely populated area" thing, but "none of the dead civilians has actually been civilians" is as delusional as "Israel is committing a genocide".

If you really think there's a day that goes by without Israel killing a civilian, I've got a bridge to sell you.

You can claim they're doing their very very best to avoid killing civilians, and that they're killing more militants than they are civilians, they still are very much killing civilians.

I have no doubt they’re killing civilians. What I dispute is that they’re murderists, a charge all too frequently leveled at Israel, and/or Jews generally, and always a subtle undercurrent when their self-defense actions happen due to circumstances they didn’t want and tried to avoid. They’re pulling the “kill one” trolley lever as fast as they can yank it, but the trolleys keep coming.

Also, enlist children so the enemy isn't merely killing civilians but children.

One can also play the "racists denying brown people their childhood" card when someone suggests that a 17-year-old freedom fighter is a noncentral example of a "child".

I'm guessing he read about the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves to protest Ngo Dinh Diem's regime and, maybe was depressed/suicidal already and decided that as long as he was putting an end to himself he might as well do it in a way that makes some kind of impact.

  1. Self-immolation draws attention. It's like tossing soup on a painting that's protected by glass. It doesn't do anything by itself, but it draws attention to the issue. It may also inspire comrades to action that does actually have impacts, like voting.

  2. We have soldiers who'd do that because the military is a very large place with lots of people. It's against the rules for soldiers to make political statements, especially ones that dramatic in uniform, but when you're the single largest employer in the USA, some of your employees will be mentally ill and break the rules.

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