Praise of Bushnell's self-immolation puts US closer to suicide bombings - "The American radical left’s glorification of the self-immolation of US airman Aaron Bushnell in front of Israel’s Washington, DC embassy on Sunday is another step toward widespread acts of political violence in America... “I am an active duty member of the US Air Force,” said Bushnell. “And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people in Palestine have been experiencing at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” In any other situation, Bushnell’s suicide would result in so-called compassionate humanitarians raising awareness about mental health and suicide prevention. Instead, his action was treated as legitimate and he was called a martyr who died in an act of “resistance.”... Having suicide ideologically sanctioned if done in protest risks the lives of those in vulnerable mental conditions or have also worked themselves into a state of hysteria over a war an ocean away. Yet it is not only irresponsible to promote suicide because of those that my commit it, but also because an act of suicidal political protest is another step toward more political violence. Willingness to commit harm to oneself is an act of violence, even if directed inward. The line between self-immolation and a suicide bombing is one of tools and the will to extend that violence onto others. Willingness to inflict violence on others is a matter of accepting the tactic as a justified objective and the legitimacy of a target. The American radical left has made it clear that it is not against extending the tools used to achieve its political objectives. Since the October 7 Hamas massacre, protesters in New York City have repeatedly called for “resistance” by “any means necessary.” Political violence has become accepted if the ends justify the means. There are countless examples of US-based radicals who embraced the Hamas pogrom, calling it an act of “decolonization” or “resistance.” As writer Najma Sharif wrote on X on the day of the attack: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.” In January, the Majority Report’s Emma Vigeland condoned the Houthi use of maritime terrorism against civilian vessels to force a political outcome on Israel and the US. In November a TikTok trend saw users post videos expressing sympathy for September 11 terrorist attack mastermind and Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, because they read his “Letter to the American People,” which justified his actions with diatribes on Jewish conspiracies, US imperialism, and class warfare. The far-Left already believes it is grappling with an evil that justifies violence. Bushnell had been deluded into thinking that there was a genocide occurring. He also touched upon another devil in the radical-left’s pantheon of demons, calling Israelis “colonizers.” Israel is also accused by those of Bushnell’s political orientation of “apartheid,” with racism perhaps the greatest evil in the left-wing American mind. Israeli embassies are already valid potential targets to such activists, since it has been argued numerous times that no Israelis are civilians, since they are considered actual or potential soldiers in the IDF. Yet the past several months have also shown the increased legitimacy of attacking anything connected to Israel, from Jewish houses of worship to smashing the windows of a Starbucks in Seattle. Anything with any relationship to Israel has for years been a valid target for boycott by student activists, who already believe certain forms of speech is violence anyway. There does not appear to be any ideological or moral restrictions preventing terrorist attacks as suicide bombings. On Monday, videographer Ford Fischer documented activists expressing calls for violent escalation in Bushnell’s name. Activists burned the Israeli flag in solidarity with Bushnell, and chanted, “If we burn, you burn with us!” One speaker in Fischer’s video, Fatima from Afghanistan, said that Bushnell “put his principled militant politics into action and set himself on fire. I can promise you that he wants us to do more. He wants us to be more militant and radical in our actions. I hear a lot of revolutionary rhetoric in these protests and rallies, but all our tactics have been liberal as hell.” Another speaker called to “escalate the situation,” and another led chants calling “We won’t hide, we won’t cower! Take up guns and seize their power!” and the classic “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution!” The Second Intifada saw Palestinians attacking Israeli civilians by committing suicide with explosive vests. The reaction of the radical left to Bushnell’s death shows that there is only one thing preventing Americans from perpetrating such an act – an explosive vest. There may be many more Bushnells waiting in the wings, inspired to follow his lead, or escalate to the next level. Those willing to kill themselves for a cause may have no qualms about killing others."
Thread by @ContentedIndie on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "So it appears the Reddit account of the guy who lit himself on fire has been located. I've looked at it. It's a deluge of anti-American hatred, gloating over dead soldiers, rampant antisemitism. This was not a serviceman. This was a plant.
He was an anti-West anarchist who regularly imbibed extremist manure on a daily basis. If you mentally profiled him, your profile was most likely almost entirely correct. He was a tankie who regularly supported foreign dictatorships, cheered terrorist acts, and made sickening, dark comments. USAF needs to dishonorably discharge whoever screened him. This was a colossal failure of vetting. It appears Bushnell would seek out KIA reports of American soldiers to mock them.
I did not want to give this out, because he was extremely disturbed and is best left forgotten or used as a psych case study: His username on Reddit is acebush1 A user from the Destiny reddit community originally identified Bushnell's handle after seeing similarities between his Twitch account and the Reddit account in question. Bushnell did not light himself on fire because he "had no choice". He did it to inspire others to violence, as you will see by his postings. He was not an activist, he was a radicalized hardcore ideologue and a bigot.
Aaron Bushnell posted his video before he killed himself to the Patreon he had set up for people to subscribe to his extremist views. In other words, he commercialized his suicide. He also hand-picked various anarchist "news" outlets to give it to beforehand. Aaron not only knew that committing public suicide, especially in the way he did it, would encourage more suicides: He frequently talked about the concept of "contagion", hoping more would emulate him into committing violent, anarchist acts and self-harm. This was not a "noble act" by a guiltless person. This was a premeditated and carefully choreographed attempt to radicalize and encourage people to hurt themselves in service of a deadly ideology and movement.
As someone who has multiple members of my family who have served, what Bushnell did was a disgrace to the uniform of the highest order. He did not join the USAF to serve his country or his people. No, what Aaron Bushnell did was abuse the authority and prestige given to him by USAF as a recruit, to try and mainstream violent, domestic terrorist views. It is no different than a pedophile grooming a child, or a rapist who threatens the job of his secretary. On the day three American soldiers were killed in Jordan by Iranian-backed groups, Bushnell posted to the "All Cops Are Bastards" or "ACAB" subreddit, several mocking responses celebrating their deaths. Bushnell's antisemitism was grotesque. On an almost hourly basis, he would praise Hamas and similarly aligned terrorist groups. He repeatedly said there were no Israeli civilians because they were all "colonizers", and that they "deserved" Oct 7, 2023. He repeatedly excused or endorsed the atrocities committed by Hamas, calling them "acts of resistance" against a "colonial power". Standard cookie cutter "progressive" zealot stuff you can find taught in universities these days.
The Washington Post already has their expose out on Bushnell. More will follow. As more and more of his internet presence is uncovered, I'm sure we will find worse and worse things. So many red flags that should have been acted upon."
Thread by @realJeremyCarl on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The contrast between Bushnell's self-immolation and the most famous modern self-immolation (that of Thích Quảng Đức in South Vietnam in 1963) tells you so much about the state and status of young white left-wing men in America today. When the Buddhist monk Đức famously self-immolated he did so to to protest the violation of the rights of *his* people, the Buddhist majority of South Vietnam, from unjust discrimination and persecution by their government. By contrast, despite the severe anti-white discrimination in the U.S. Military (discussed in the "military" chapter of my forthcoming book--which a leading analyst called "probably one of the best compilations of the American military’s racist present") Bushnell is not willing to fight for himself or demand that he be treated justly by his own government. Instead he transfers all of his moral outrage to a conflict thousands of miles away. He deludes himself in his cowardly refusal to stand up for his own rights, a stand for which he would actually face social disapproval, recasting it as a courageous concern for others."
US Airman who self-immolated in DC connected to Antifa, mocked military service members - "It has been revealed that Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC on Sunday, was a supporter of the "Stop Cop City" movement and was connected to Antifa. He also mocked deceased US military personnel in online posts... Bushnell followed many different activist and radical left-wing organizations and engaged with them on Reddit."
Meme - Israeli perspective: "Here is a comment from the reddit account of Aaron Bushnell. According to him, "there are no Israeli civilians." He also justified the massacre Hamas committed at the Nova festival. This is the person who became a moral exempler for progressives, and it is deeply disturbing."
"Hey so I am not Palestinian an am in no position to endorse or condemn Hamas' actions. That being said, neither are most people, and there are a lot of very confidently ignorant opinions being thrown around. There are no Israeli "civilians" or tourists who have no part in the oppression of Palestine. That idea doesn't make any sense and betrays a lack of understanding of what the oppression of Palestine even is. Israel is a settler colonialist apartheid state. All of its residents or their immediate forebears have moved there specifically to settle on stolen land. Land whose people are being cornered and cleansed just a few miles away, or right next door in the case of the West Bank. There are no Israelis without the genocide of the Palestinian people. To bring this into stark relief, there is the example of the music festival which the liberal states and media have made such a point of clutching their pearls over. "A music festival! How could it get more innocent than a music festival!?" That music festival was happening just three miles from Gaza, within site of the border wall. Imagine a similar event happening in the early days of the colonization of North America. Can you or I really say that Indigenous people are wrong for retaliating against colonizers who are rubbing their domination in their face?"
Meme - John Doyle: "Sacrifice for foreigners, they forget your name by the next day and go back to focusing on only their people, whom you lit yourself on fire for. In a week, if any in the BIPOC coalition recall his sacrifice it will be in talk of Whites making their struggle about themselves."
Meme - "White man literally burns himself alive for Palestine and leftists still hate him for being white.
veronica: "can we not use this phrase on white men please. i get the sentiment but rest in power is historically used to mourn black people who were killed by hate crimes and police"
Jairo | Fanez-Flores: "Rest in power Aaron Bushnell."
Meme - Ben Sixsmith: "God, it sounds tough to be a white leftist fella. Even burning yourself to death in the name of anti-imperialism is an expression of privilege."
@nicotinecultech: "No. I don't believe we can't speak ill of the dead. I think that's a colonial ideology that prevents us from having conversations about the complex impacts a person's life has made including the actions that make that cause legitimate harm, no matter if they repented at the end. Aaron Bushnell's self immolation was an act of penance driven by want to absolve himself of white guilt as an active military man. He is not a martyr, and his choice was a privilege Palestinian martyrs forced to fight do not have and are not lauded for."
Meme - "I'm conflicted. On one hand, opposing Isntreal is based. On the other hand, this guy looks exactly like somebody who'd burn himself alive in support of a bunch of people who'd rather see him dead anyway."
