‘In America, it’s viewed as too extreme’: selfimmolation as protest – and sacrifice
When Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Pentagon in Washington last weekend, in protest against the situation in Palestine, he became an international story.
An active-duty member of the US air force, Bushnell livestreamed his death, from the moment he said he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” to the moment he poured fluid over himself and burst into flames.
“Free Palestine,” Bushnell shouted, the video shows, as he burned.
In the media, Bushnell’s death prompted news stories, thinkpieces and internal newsroom conversations about how to cover self-immolation. Online, people speculated about Bushnell’s mental health and his background, and questioned his motives.
Amid the noise, one thing was clear: it got people talking, in a way that other, multi-person protests have sometimes failed to do.
“Self-immolation has a tremendous effect in its moment. That’s why you’re talking with me, that’s why there are all these stories about this,” said Indira Palacios-Valladares, a political science professor at Missouri State University whose research has focused on protest movements.
“It’s very dramatic. Death by fire … people don’t die immediately. And it’s terrible to watch.”
The death of Bushnell, 25, came three months after someone set themselves on fire outside the Israeli consulate in what police said was “an act of extreme political protest”: a Palestinian
flag was found at the scene. That person remains in a critical condition, Atlanta police said. The story received far less attention, perhaps because the identity of the protester has not been released.
“Who makes the sacrifice is important,” Palacios-Valladares said. People directly affected by a political situation or conflict tend to be given more credence – as in the case of Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist monk who selfimmolated in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1963.
But beyond that, the act of selfimmolation is just the next, perhaps most desperate, act of protest.
“We’re always surprised by this, that these things are so dramatic, but in fact, they’re an exaggeration of something that is intrinsic to any protest: that protesters always put their body at risk. When you go and protest in the street, you’re going to be beaten up maybe. You may even be killed, you may go to jail,” Palacios-Valladares said.
“So setting yourself on fire, or for that matter, hunger strikes, are an extreme version of that. This is intrinsic to every protest, the idea that you put your body at risk.”
Press coverage treatment of selfimmolation in the west has not always been generous. In Bushnell’s case, attention has been drawn to his upbringing in a religious compound