Aaron Bushnell Is an Idea the Western Governments Fear the Most

"To publicly destroy one’s own life in the most violent and extreme way is a stark warning for society to pay attention, as it has already crossed a line.”

Illustration by Jesse Duquette

In a world even more morbid and dystopian than our current reality, if you had to stage a play showcasing the current state of affairs to an audience that has been asleep for five months, you could effectively do it in just four acts.

Act 1 - An active US Air Force soldier lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, to protest a genocide in Gaza. 

Act 2 - While burning, a cop/security guard pointed a gun at him while the EMT kept yelling - “I need a fire extinguisher, not a gun!”

Act 3 - All the American legacy media printing the same passive headline, without stating the cause - “A man, a soldier set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington”.

Act 4 - American human rights-loving left and the gun-toting right yelling in unison - “It’s a mental health issue!” 

I can halt my article right here and you would grasp the sentiment of this moment. You would understand why we all feel like screaming into the void until our vocal cords erupt. You would understand why Aaron Bushnell resorted to such extreme measures to express his overwhelming frustration with what we have been witnessing for five months. Without even hearing his last words, these five acts vividly portray his moral outrage at what our governments expect us to accept. And endure. But also, let Aaron tell you, in his own (last) words:

“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.”

The act of setting himself on fire in front of an Israeli embassy, if you ask me, is the most heartfelt reaction to the carnage, bloodbath, and starvation of the civilian population under siege, trapped like animals, with the two biggest military and economical powers gunning them down.

What should our reaction be?

How should we react to our government taking our money to fund a foreign state that needs constant violence and wars to have a reason to exist? A state we don’t belong to, a state we have nothing to do with? How should we feel about seeing children blown up to pieces hanging from walls with their legs ripped apart and pieces of meat and skin dangling like ribbons? How should we feel about a tank that we paid for standing eye to eye with a 6-year-old, blowing her up, while also blowing up the paramedics who came to save her? How should we feel about a doctor reporting he’s receiving small children with a single sniper shot in the head, daily? 

The US military is telling its soldiers to accept this reality. Our representatives are telling us, its constituents to accept this reality. Our president, his staff, and the US Congress are telling us, its citizens to accept this reality. The reality of senseless carnage, savagery, and pointless, avoidable death.

But what if our humanity just cannot accept this reality?

You also need to know Aaron’s decision to self-immolate in protest of genocide in Gaza is not just symbolic. Aaron Bushnell was an active US Air Force airman. Active means serving in an active duty status. Active duty service members are full-time members of the military who are subject to deployment and may be stationed both domestically and overseas. At this moment.

Why is this important?

In January, it was revealed that Joe Biden had dispatched US Air Force officers to assist Israel in targeting operations in Gaza. On January 11th, The Intercept reported - “On November 21, the U.S. Air Force issued deployment guidelines for officers, including intelligence engagement officers, headed to Israel. Experts say that a team of targeting officers like this would be used to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting. The deployment guidelines were issued by the Pentagon’s Air Force component command for the Middle East, Air Forces Central, on November 21. The document provides deployment instructions to air personnel sent to the country, including an “Air Defense Liaison Team” as well as “airmen assigned as the Intelligence Engagement Officer”.” 

Max Blumenthal from The Greyzone reports: “US Airman Aaron Bushnell did not kill himself to protest some other country's war. The US Department of Defense has compelled the participation of Air Force members like Bushnell in Israel's Gaza genocide. Their orders to deploy to Israel read “mandatory".

Aaron quite literally refused to be complicit in another country’s war of interest and land grab by committing genocide and ethnic cleansing, and chose a certain death over killing innocent people, while utilizing his death to send an excruciating message. We do not want this. We do not support this.

Is America truly serving the interests of its citizens? Does it prioritize their protection, or does it prioritize the interests of foreign entities? How long will America continue to sacrifice its people in pursuit of a strategic geopolitical position, exploiting other nations' resources through war and conquest, especially now that we have instant access to information via the internet and social media, allowing us to see their actions in real-time?

This isn’t the time of Wikileaks. We are the Wikileaks now.

How much longer will this disparity persist? Between us and the boomers in power, who refuse to grasp that their business model no longer works in the age of social media? How long will it take them until they comprehend they cannot lie us into a war as effective as in the past? How many times will they try to propagandize us with the legacy media that no longer holds the sway it once did, before they grasp we now seek information independently and share it amongst ourselves? How many more dead bodies will their arrogance endure, instead of adjusting their appetites for more resources, more power? When will they realize that resorting to the outdated tactics of censorship and intimidation, reminiscent of the 1930s, is futile in a world where the majority refuses to tolerate the sight of dead bodies on their screens?

I find it disturbingly poetic that all this is transpiring at the moment Julian Assange is fighting his last attempt at extradition to the United States. I don’t have to pull this quote of his from anywhere, I know it word by word, by heart:

“Democracies are always lied into a war. The Iraq was a result of lies, and the increase in the involvement of the United States in Vietnam was the result of a Gulf of Tonkin Incident, another lie. It’s not just the lies by the intelligence analysts, it’s lies by the big media machine. And what is in the big media machine? It’s the various institutions that get too comfortable and too close to the table of power, the very tables that are meant to be reporting on, policing, and getting into the historic record.

Working against the trend of corrupt, powerful organizations who are producing a distorted perspective through mainstream media vehicles - has been the internet. It has allowed one person with one truth to speak to every single person who wants to hear that truth.”

There are days when the pictures from Gaza make me physically ill, and when on top of that rage I get a layer of gaslighting from mainstream media or genocide apologists, telling me what I see is not as bad or gruesome as it looks, or it’s a lie, or it needed to happen for some greater cause that isn’t my cause - I feel disoriented with pain. Watching Aaron’s uncensored video, I had to, we owe him at least that; it was a visual representation of how many of us have been feeling for months.

His sounds shook me even more than the already shocking visual of a man burning alive, choosing death so horrible that the world would take notice of what is happening in Gaza. I saw a post on Instagram, without the author attached saying: “Self-immolation is widely recognized as the most extreme form of protest possible. To publicly destroy one’s own life in the most violent and extreme way is a stark warning for society to pay attention, as it has already crossed a line.”

We crossed the line.

The people in power upholding imperialist values teaming up with the people who benefit from Israel’s pursuit of colonialism, occupation, and the “Western values in the Middle East” didn’t count on human beings around the globe rebelling against the inhumanity and the savagery those pursuits leave as its trail. Most of humanity cannot bear to witness unbearable atrocities daily, for months on end. They certainly didn’t count on Aaron, an Air Force airman coming from the most depraved propaganda machine known as the US military, to have a clear conviction and rebel against inhumanity in such an extreme way. 

Buckle up, in the days ahead, you'll encounter a deluge of online opinions regarding Aaron's "mental illness" from both pro-Israeli supporters aware of how damaging this is for their cause, as well as from narcissists who frequently post about spirituality, mindfulness, growth mindset, self-love, personal development, vibes, and frequencies. Their constant pursuit of self-interests cannot comprehend martyrdom or the concept of living or dying for something greater than oneself.

Ignore them. There’s nothing holistic about their commentary now, or their five-month-long silence and inaction in response to the sight of blown-up and starved children.

This part from Caitlin Johnstone deeply affected me too: “He remained standing for an unbelievable amount of time while he was burning. I don’t know where he got the strength to do it. He remained standing long after he’d stopped vocalizing.”

The image of Aaron Bushnell standing for such a long period while burning, his voice depleted from repeating "Free Palestine" before collapsing to the ground while a cop or an Israeli Embassy guard—irrelevant what his job is, as they represent the same ideology—frantically aiming his gun at a defenseless man engulfed in flames, a man posing no threat to anyone but himself at that moment, vividly illustrates just how much they’re afraid of an IDEA.

In an individualistic, capitalist, Western society, a morally upright individual who perceives the world beyond his interests and pleasures—a person with a conscience so resolute that no government, military, or propaganda can sway him from his humanity and moral principles—represents the ideology the colonial projects that are the Western governments fear the most.

Rest in Peace, Aaron! 

Your sacrifice won’t be in vain, as long as the rest of us are here, pushing through any means available for a more just society - for all.

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