No grandeur in suicide
Amajor goal of any protest is simply to say: We care about this cause, and you should, too. Hence the attraction of extreme forms of protest.
When someone dies to make a point — as Aaron Bushnell, a young airman who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in D.C., did this week — no one can maintain that he was posturing or virtue-signaling. When he wrote about U.S. complicity in “genocide against the Palestinian people,” he meant it.
That level of commitment has earned Bushnell some posthumous praise. Activist Aya Hijazi called him “a hero and a martyr” and his suicide “a wake-up call.” Jewish Voice for Peace honored his “final act of solidarity.” Cornel West, a progressive academic who is running for president, said we should never forget Bushnell’s courage. Green Party candidate Jill Stein quoted Bushnell and added: “This extraordinary sacrifice brings into greater focus the immense horror that our government is committing in our name.”
These encomiums are irresponsible. They are also false.
Bushnell’s suicide didn’t teach us anything. It didn’t, and won’t, save one life. NPR quoted a sociologist who said that it drew attention to the Palestinian cause: “The very fact that we are talking about this shows that it breaks through.” But we have been talking about the conflict in the Middle East for months. All that has changed is that some attention has been diverted to Bushnell’s story. His death will not change U.S. policy or public opinion — and it shouldn’t.
The emotional depth and force of someone’s conviction might be impressive, but it is not a reason to share that conviction. Many people who support Israel’s campaign do so even though they consider the deaths of innocent Palestinians a tragedy, albeit one they mostly blame on Hamas. Whether they’re right or wrong in that judgment, nothing Bushnell did should change it. (And if they don’t already care about Palestinians, his death won’t make them start.)
The convictions that motivated Bushnell were, as it happens, noxious. He denied that any Israeli could be a civilian, a rationalization for the atrocities of Oct. 7, and specifically defended the legitimacy of attacking a music festival.
Defenses of Bushnell’s suicide are especially wrongheaded now. Our country has seen rising rates of mental illness among young people — including rising rates of self-harm, which suggest this isn’t just a matter of more diagnoses. Suicide rates have been rising for decades. Some commentators insist that there is no evidence Bushnell suffered from any form of mental illness, even though a police report indicated “signs of mental distress” before the fatal act.
But even if we were to assume his behavior was in some sense well-considered and rational, we have to reckon with the possible consequences of his decision — and the attendant publicity and praise for him — for people with suicidal thoughts. Studies have long recognized the phenomenon of “suicide contagion.” It’s also plausible, and we have some evidence, that there is a connection between mental illness and some types of political extremism, such as sympathy for political violence. This is exactly the wrong cultural moment to portray suicide as righteous and productive.
We should mourn for Bushnell and anyone who loved him. But we should not imbue his suicide with a grandeur it does not deserve. He accomplished nothing good by killing himself. No matter how passionate your beliefs, please don’t follow the example of his senseless death.