Aaron Bushnell died by self-immolation in protest of the Gaza genocide one year ago. The memory of his selfless deed should stir a fire in our souls, and compel us to re-dedicate ourselves to a better, more justice-oriented world.
By James Ray, Reposted from Mondoweiss
On February 25, 2024, millions across the world tuned in to see a video flash across our timelines, soon to be followed by countless headlines. In the video, a young man in military fatigues gave a brief speech before standing in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C., pouring a liquid atop his head and body, and lighting himself on fire in what was the most high-profile instance of self-immolation in recent memory. His last words in the speech he gave would be forever imprinted on the minds of those who saw his last act:
“My name is Aaron Bushnell, and I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force. 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.”
Before his body collapsed as he was engulfed by flames, he let out several screams in which he said “Free Palestine… Free Palestine… Free Palestine.” His chant became more and more strained as the fire burned, and by his last repetition it was clear Aaron was experiencing a level of pain many will never in their lives experience or understand.
Shortly after he was transferred to a hospital by emergency responders, he succumbed to the injuries of his last political act – becoming a martyr for a cause he believed in so deeply that he would endure the worst pain imaginable to bring attention to it. His death would ripple through mainstream media and political circles, with many demonizing him as a dangerous, unhinged radical, or just as nefariously, a man with mental health issues who simply committed suicide as a result of deep internal struggles.
As the news sunk in, many wrote their think pieces, made their positions known, and did everything they could to analyze and wrestle with the graphic violence that they had witnessed. Others took the moment as one to reflect on their own lives, analyze their efforts for a cause Aaron had given his life to, and wrestle with the horrific reality that his action was done with the explicit message that the pain he would experience was nothing compared to the pain of those he was fighting to center.
I know I am not alone in saying I can remember the day like it was yesterday. I heard the news before the video and struggled to watch the video itself for several hours. I only ultimately watched knowing that Aaron had chosen his method because of his need to send a message to the world at large, and I could not in good conscience avoid his last act as if it was simply a headline. By the end of the video, it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I had to sit down, cry, call my loved ones, and try to explain to those around me what I was feeling.
Some, who themselves organized, were wrestling with the same complex web of emotions I was; all of us just trying to wrestle with what we had witnessed. The overriding questions of “A military member did what?” to “What do we do?” to the final question we all confronted of “Are we doing enough?” were being tossed back and forth in every call and text I made that day. For many of us, these had been questions we had already been asking as to that point more than 30,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza amid the Zionist entity’s genocidal campaign.
Centering that context is critical in this reflection, as it was what Aaron was calling for. Aaron’s act was a contradictory one: an act of immense graphic violence guaranteed to garner attention to himself done in service to a cause he desperately wanted people to pay attention to. It almost feels like a disservice to note that it is feasible that he would’ve been happy leaving this world unknown as a person so long as the cause he fought for was highlighted. His decision was one of revolutionary selflessness: giving his body and soul to a cause greater than him to draw attention, if even a brief moment, to the suffering he had seen for months to that point. But what had he seen?
Like all of us, Aaron had spent the days, weeks, and months since October 7, 2023, witnessing untold horrors unfolding across the digital world. The genocide in Gaza has been one that has been live-streamed from the beginning by Palestinians who wanted the world to see the brutal colonial violence they were experiencing and had been experiencing for decades. Thousands of Palestinians were being actively slaughtered by Israeli bombs and bullets – many of which were directly supplied by their U.S. imperial benefactor. Videos of children crushed under rubble, of fathers carrying the remains of their family members in bags, of people being crushed by Israeli armored bulldozers, of entire blocks of Gaza being leveled and inhabitants rounded up and murdered by an occupational military hellbent on their annihilation, all were circulating daily.
Every one of us had seen these images and videos, many of which had been provided by Palestinian reporters bravely working day after day on the ground – facing direct targeting by the same military as it assassinated those who might tell the stories of what was happening around them to the world. We had become more desperate as these images flooded our screens with our protests, sit-ins, letter-writing campaigns, and more failing to change the ongoings. Thousands poured into the streets to find that our politicians, be they Democrats or Republicans, were dedicated to the genocide in Gaza in ways that superseded the interests of even their political bases.
Aaron saw the same images we did. One must question whether or not he felt a unique sense of desperation and perhaps culpability as he wore the uniform of a military that was directly complicit in the slaughter he was witnessing. His political development, according to his friends and family, led him to the path of becoming an anarchist while serving, which must have made for a complicated internal struggle for him. I imagine he had many sober conversations with himself, but truthfully I will never know. His last statement does indicate that he did at the very least feel a level of complicity, one he decided he could not sustain. That much we know to be true. His political development and views are ones borne of empathy, and reading his own words we can clearly paint a picture of someone with dep love for his common man. In his own words:
“I’ve always been bothered by the reality of homelessness, even back when I was growing up in a conservative community. I have come to believe in the importance of solidarity politics and I view the enforcement of homelessness as a major front in the class war which must be challenged for all our sakes.
I view helping my houseless neighbors as a moral obligation, a matter of social justice, and a matter of good politics. If I don’t stand with those more marginalized than me today then who will be left to stand with me tomorrow. I view enforced homelessness as a societal failing and a crime against humanity. I believe that no one deserves to be deprived of basic human necessities. I believe that homelessness as an involuntary condition must be abolished.”
The act he chose after seeing such imagery, though violent and for some controversial, is not one without historical context. Self-immolation has been a semi-frequent form of political protest in countless struggles throughout history. Notably, Buddhist monks living under the boot of the South Vietnamese U.S. puppet government self-immolated to protest that regime’s policies.
In a letter to Martin Luther King Junior, Thich Nhat Hanh would later state, regarding their acts, that:
“To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with the utmost courage, frankness, determination, and sincerity.”
This, in my opinion, is what we should internalize as we come to the first anniversary of Aaron’s sacrifice. There is a tendency among many to look back at his action and think that the solution is better mental health systems when our comrades are struggling, that the action is not one to be glorified, and that what his death represents is something unfortunate though powerful. I think that does not do justice to Aaron’s memory or the path he chose.
Aaron was a man who, as a member of an imperialist military force, found life in the Palestinian struggle – life that forced him to recognize the complicated web of contradictions in front of him and choose to commit to an act with longstanding political and historical significance to try to change something… anything… about it. His act, far from being something of selfishness and suicide, was one of life and sober, revolutionary contemplation. He deserves to be remembered not as a man with deep internal struggles who chose suicide, but as a man who put himself through unthinkable pain to push us one step closer to a liberated Palestine and a liberated world.
His memory should stir a fire in our souls, and force us to evaluate our commitment to a better world. He is among millions of martyrs who have given their lives for the cause of liberation in every corner of the globe. His act is proof of his dedication to his beliefs, and his unwillingness to sit idly by as horrors unfold in front of him. Though not a call for us to replicate his methods, we should strive to replicate his dedication every single day of our lives until Palestine is liberated from the river to the sea.
James Ray is a writer for Mondoweiss.
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