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Seriously????
The fucking insane Navy vet editor over at the National Review says this about a dead man. How about mourning the guy instead of being a subhuman piece of scum over his politics?
Say his name for the record. Luther Ray Abel wrote that article. I want this to be searchable with that name. Let it be known that Luther Ray Abel discards human dignity; specifically Aaron Bushnell inherit human dignity, in exchange for snarky article clicks.
His name is searchable on the National Review site on the article or shall I say bullshit hit piece. It tries to lambast him for doing this in uniform and having anarchist views. So his politics were different and he broke a military rule? So what, he is dead and he is/was a human being regardless of his views.
You mean Luther Ray Abel, the guy who spoke ill of an active duty service member's act of protest through self immolation? Is that the Luther Ray Abel you're referring to?
Went to the article and there are 172 comments. Didn't read them all as it was enraging. Everyone is agreeing with the article and calling him suicidal, insane or other such things. Fuck that place
Even if the guy was suicidal, so fucking what. He's dead, Act like a bunch of humans and focus on that instead of the idiotic shit they are. All they are doing is making themselves look like rabid animals.
Not really. It's a conservative piece of toilet paper that someone forgot to flush.
The National Review is the same level of conservative propaganda as The Washington Times or Newsmax.
Wow. Luther Ray Abel is a total loser. I'm willing to bet this young airman, Aaron Bushnell, had infinitely-more courage and moral conviction than this piece of shit.
Even the use of "our military"—at least to me—sounds highly exclusive, as if the writer is talking of a type of person who doesn't belong in "our military."
Then the piece of shit purposefully mangles the message that the late airman was trying to amplify. Is "free Palestine" the same as "free hamas?" No the fuck it isn't.
his last words were:
"My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal... FREE PALESTINE!"
I dislike this. I've seen first hand what serious burns do to people, both in the immediate and long term. Imo, this is there should be no speech louder than this, but it just kinda gets an "oh, damn, really? Man. What's on the next channel?" reaction. I dislike that people resort to this when they're going to get ignored, and I dislike that it largely is ignored except for a fleeting moment of sensational headlines.
The problem is, as far as I see it, that this doesn't change minds. Thousands of children are dead now. Unless you're totally ignorant of that, in which case you will be totally ignorant of why he killed himself in this manner, it's not going to make you suddenly care about Palestine when exponentially more dead children who didn't die by their own hand will not.
Or discredit him as a libtard crazy. That is what people on the other side of this argument have been saying. I hate this world.
I wish I could say I was surprised.
The base’s Pavlovian rejection of anything said by an accused outsider has got to be one of the Republican party’s biggest real “achievements.”
Or maybe I’m giving them too much credit. Mixing simple “ill will towards others” with a dash of “confirmation bias” will produce a very similar result.
no speech louder than this
It's loud about the strength of this guy's conviction but it provides no actual argument or information. I don't think it's cause to change one's opinion about Biden's foreign policy one way or another. In fact, I'd go further and say that it probably should be ignored as much as possible in order to avoid motivating other people to do the same thing.
I disagree. Fairly certain it got politicians attention. When your own soldiers are standing outside of your house setting themselves on fire it’s probably best to pay attention to the message.
"As a tactic, self-immolation expresses a logic similar to the premise of the hunger strike. The protester treats himself or herself as a hostage, attempting to use his or her willingness to die to pressure the authorities. This strategy presumes that the authorities are concerned with the protester’s well-being in the first place.
It is not willingness to die that will sway our rulers. They really fear our lives, not our deaths—they fear our willingness to act collectively according to a different logic, actively interrupting their order."
If you pull that trigger, Takeshi, it doesn't all go away. Just you.
-Quellcrist Falconer
“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
-- Aaron Bushnell
This strategy presumes that the authorities are concerned with the protester’s well-being in the first place.
Actually, it presumes access to media outlets/social media who will help build pressure on authorities. It's a pressure campaign tactic whose success or failure relies on building outside, non-state civil society support. By failing to engage with why people resort to tactics like hunger striking or self-immolation and just making shit up, the piece fails to really make its case.
While I don't support self-immolation as a tactic, the mentality this critique relies on enables the abuses that lead people to self-immolate or go on hunger strike to start with.
BTW about 98% of everything CrimethInc publishes is exactly this off-base and unhelpful.
I think it is done to pressure the regular people to overthrow the government. Showing how important the issue is and how much he sacrificed himself just to motivate people, that everybody else can sacrifice far less by risking arrest overthrowing the government.
The article showing a (sanitized) picture of the consulate with police standing around is something of a disservice to the man who sacrificed himself to make a statement.
They meant it to be a disservice.
[...] in an apparent protest against the Israel-Hamas war [...]
The article is just blurring the act, censoring its force gained by sacrifice, and mis-attributing its target. One can easily say, after having been exposed to hundreds of similarly malicious wording in public accountings of acts usually consisting of protests not in line with the local authority, that this is very deliberate and made to utilize even the last thing a person does to raise awareness about a systemic unjust treatment.
Someone with zero context about the situation could easily understand this act with different intent.
It's horrible that someone feels this situation is so dire that they need to resort to this.
However, I also don't know that this will achieve anything any more than it did in Vietnam.
Next of kin notification is continuing, so the Air Force won’t release his name until 24 hours after the final notification is complete.
But he live-streamed it and said his name. He is Aaron Bushnell, a brave man who knew he wouldn’t survive the protest he felt he needed to carry out.
I cried when I watched the video. The man inhaling lungfuls of flame and smoke to chant “Free Palestine!” was painful. I hope his family may find some small comfort in the pride they should feel for his courage.
Aaron Bushnell is a hero and understood what is at stake. I wish people stop trying to downplay his actions as being mentally ill.
Jan Palach self immolated in Prague to protest the invasion of Soviet forces at the end of the Prague Spring.. there are monuments to him around the city. It seems lighting youself on fire aint what it used to be
Protesting Russian war crimes means you are a hero and should be remembered forever.
Protesting Western war crimes means you are a mentally ill tankie and need to get off Twitter.
Poor guy. I admire his courage and conviction to protest this genocide, and I cannot imagine how painful that must have been.
Rest in Power. I pray we can somehow ensure your actions aren't in vain.
RIP, I respect his anti war ideology but people shouldn’t be hurting themselves to make a point. I highly doubt this is going to make the impact he thought it was going to do. He might have had mental health issues and felt suicidal.
Sure made a hell of an impact on me.
This form of protest goes back a long way - famously by Buddhist monks during the Vietnam war.
It’s also very similar to hunger strikes, in my opinion. There was Bobby Sands and his comrades, of course. There were hunger strikes protesting the brutal conditions at Guantanamo Bay, resulting in force feeding techniques condemned as torture by the international community.
Do all of the people performing acts of self harm in protest to bring attention to a situation they consider intolerable suffer from mental health issues? Do people who join the Marines and put their lives at risk in the infantry because they think they’re “defending their country” have mental health issues? Do drone pilots, who in no way put themselves at risk of harm but who absolutely and knowingly end up killing arbitrary civilians have mental health issues?
If you ask me, I’d say yes to all of those. I’d say the same about politicians who pass laws to ban medical care to patients, and I’d say the same about the people who vote for them.
So people protesting via self-immolation, protesting via hunger strike, joining the military in a role that risks death are suicidal. People joining the military in a way that causes death, or who pass legislation that causes death, or who elect politicians who pass legislation that causes death are homicidal.
What should we do about all of that?
...Well good. Living through stuff like that is awful.
Free Palestine. RIP Aaron Bushnell.