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.

Self immolation started the Arab Spring.

We have no idea what still happen.

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.

“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
-- Aaron Bushnell

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.

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

I've seen people on Reddit blaming "leftist circlejerk holes" for "radicalizing" him (apparently Aaron had a Reddit account)

I felt the urge to get off Reddit more than ever.

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?

Self immolation protest should be reserved for deaf ears and as a very last resort. This guy did not need to do this as everyone knows this is a bloody genocide whether you're for it or not. The lines have already been set and his death won't invoke any change of mind.

It seems like the entire world is caught in this trap. On one side you've got actual fascists, and on the other you have feckless liberals who can't seem to get it through their heads that this isn't the 90s anymore.

EVERYONE STOP SYMPATHIZING WITH HIM, because of a few angry bullshit takes he had on the internet. Because doing that removes your eligibility for sympathy.

Him being an idiot doesn't mean he was a bad person. Does he have some record of doing something actually "VILE"?