Upfront I would like to address the traumatic nature of the topic I will be covering this week, in light of the two self immolation’s that have occurred this week in reference to the siege upon Gaza, I really wanted to dive further into the history and modern context that surrounds the act of setting ones body on fire for the sake of protest. (For obvious reasons I am not going to attach an image to this weeks blog. I hope you can understand why)

Aaron Bushnell was a 25 year old air force airmen who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. on February 25th 2024, who died while screaming Free Palestine. He is not the first person to have set himself on fire in protest of the violent acts that Israel is committing in Gaza, nor is he the first person to have set himself on fire in Washington. Self immolation has a history going back over 500 years, as many people, especially monks have used this a method of protest against regimes but a more modern history of this act begins around the inception of TV and the war in Vietnam. There are two self immolation’s that are arguably the most famous in history. The burning of Thich Quang Duc in a crowded public street to protest the unfair treatment of Buddhists in south Vietnam was the first act that gained mainstream notoriety, additionally it received a second resurgence in notoriety after after it became the album art for the Left leaning band “Rage Against the Machine.” This first act of self immolation was effectively used to convey to western audiences the true brutality of the discrimination and was the moment many protesters cite as when they began to disagree with the war in Vietnam.

The usage of immolation to provoke sentiment and awareness for the harsh realities of a war or situation also become clear when looking at the other infamous self immolation. The suicide by fire of Mohamed Bouazizi is often cited as the genesis for the 2010 Arab Spring, where his immolation set of protests for political liberation across Tunisia and the majority of Egypt and other countries around them. The images of his death acted as a mobilizing call where many Arab workers identified with his struggle and through the use of existing community support networks mobilized to not let his death be in vein. What is important to note however, is that not all immolation’s change the world. They are really only politically effective when accompanied by effective community organization that occurs as a precursor to the event. As an example of one that was less effective, Colorado climate protestor Wynn Alan Bruce, set himself on fire on the steps of the supreme court to protest the weakening of the EPA by the court. His death had much less of an effect than that of Mohamed Bouazizi  because he was not connected with other political organizations that could use his death as a motivating factor. What kind of death will Aaron Bushnell’s be, we can only wait to see.