Feting Suicide
Reckless lefties don’t care if causes copycats
PROGRESSIVES say they are really concerned about responsibly and sensitively handling mental-health issues. That’s why we need trigger warnings, sensitivity readers and all that nonsense, right?
But for some on the left, all that goes out the window when there’s a chance to weaponize mental health to push an agenda they agree with — so much so that they’re evidently willing to exploit and glorify a suicide.
At least that’s sure what it looks like, after the shocking and reckless way many prominent left-wing figures have responded to the suicide of Aaron Bushnell, an active member of the Air Force who died by suicide Sunday in an act of protest against Israel’s war in Gaza.
While we should all feel compassion for the struggles of a person who was clearly deeply unwell, you’d think that even the most ardent Palestine supporters would be careful not to glorify his death given the well-studied “contagion” effect this can have on prompting additional suicides.
You’d be wrong. Left-wing academic and presidential candidate Cornel West tweeted praising Bushnell’s “extraordinary courage and commitment” and said he “died for truth and justice.”
Similarly, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein tweeted out his last words and urged, “Rest in Power Aaron Bushnell.”
Former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters called him an “All American Hero.”
Socialist influencer Owen Jones, who boasts a whopping 1.1 million Twitter followers, wrote, “Aaron Bushnell died because he had too much humanity for a world run by people who don’t have any.”
Activist Aya Hijazi added that Bushnell was not just a “hero” but also a “martyr.”
You get the idea. Social-media post after socialmedia post praised Bushnell as some form of hero, telling millions of people that suicide is a courageous and legitimate form of political protest.
On TikTok in particular, videos and content about Bushnell’s death openly spoke of him as a hero and portrayed his death as a laudable sacrifice. It’s particularly disturbing that millions of impressionable young people likely saw these TikTok videos because mentally struggling young people are among the most vulnerable to suicide contagion.
You don’t need a psychology PhD to see how this collective recklessness could have deadly consequences.
Other troubled, mentally distressed young people could see Bushnell receiving this adoration and be pushed to take their own lives in a similar manner.
Study after study has found that valorizing people who die by suicide prompts copycats, which is why the Reporting on Suicide project explicitly says we should avoid “glamorizing or romanticizing suicide.”
But all that went out the window this time — when left-wing activists decided their agenda was more important.
Because such influential online voices have taken this approach, additional lives may well be lost in this tragic, and ultimately futile, form of protest. Families could be shattered and promising lives ended prematurely thanks to the reckless response to this incident, all while having no actual effect on the war in Gaza. (I mean, does anyone really think Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli military are going to change course in their war efforts because a random person 5,000 miles away dies by suicide?)
Fortunately, not everyone on the left has succumbed to this madness. Reliably progressive Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern spoke out against his own side and triggered ample backlash, merely by saying, “I strongly oppose valorizing any form of suicide as a noble, principled, or legitimate form of political protest.”
“People suffering mental illness deserve empathy and respect, but it is wildly irresponsible to praise them for using a political justification to take their own life,” he concluded.
Critics of Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas have every right to make their voices heard.
But it really shouldn’t be too much to ask that they do so without exploiting and endangering countless mentally vulnerable young Americans.