Content Warning: This article includes graphic descriptions of suicide and commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Last month, I cited a TikTok about one woman’s decision to quit vaping in protest of labor conditions in the Congo. I wrote about the libidinal tendency for my generation to make sacrifices for victims of struggles that they have never felt. Not before the end of the month, Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell burned himself to death in protest of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Levi Pierpont, a friend of the late Bushnell, wrote an Op-Ed for the Guardian this weekend. Pierpont urges us not to throw the baby out with the bathwater — the baby being Bushnell’s spirited opposition to genocide and the bathwater being the way by which he expressed that opposition. “Please, don’t forget Aaron,” he writes. “Let his death inspire you to live, with your whole being committed to the cause of justice for oppressed people.”
Bushnell’s death was broadcast live on the streaming platform Twitch. In the recording, a cop shouts, “I don’t need guns! I need fire extinguishers!” We know that weapons do not put out fires. The Arab Spring erupted as a result of Mohamed Bouazizi’s public self-immolation; if we are to learn anything from the consequent wars in Yemen, Syria and Libya in particular, it is that violent suppression preludes societal collapse. The Israeli offensive in Gaza only provokes more resistance. If Israel is to exist in peace, or at all, it cannot afford to make more victims.
Still, self-immolation can’t be a sustainable form of protest. It is noble to sacrifice yourself to save a stranger but it is pragmatic to save both at once. Lenin said as much: Struggles are defensive, they are won for survival. This is the unwitting principle of quitting the vape for Congo. Fighting means saving ourselves. We must both reject that Bushnell’s death was a mere lapse of sanity and also that his kind of sacrifice is a productive form of resistance. Think about the fruitful life of activism that Bushnell could have had.
Liberals will take this opportunity to call leftism a “death cult.” We know better — there is no greater celebration of life than community. Grace Lee Boggs wrote The Next American Revolution in 2011: “All over the world, local groups are struggling, as we are in Detroit, to keep our communities, our environment, and our humanity from being destroyed by corporate globalization.” Lee Boggs, a Detroit community activist and Marxist philosopher, humbly dedicated her life to the human race. Ever the good Hegelian, she is remembered for her humanist interpretation of Marx’s early philosophical texts. With reference to George Herbert Mead, she wrote, “A fundamental problem of all men and therefore of all philosophy is the relation of the individual to the whole of things.” This attitude is embodied by her activism. She quotes Einstein: “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” This describes Bushnell’s philosophy well, I think. I wish he had remembered that he was also part of that beautiful whole; his life mattered too.
Lee Boggs found the Phenomenology of Mind and Science of Logic difficult but worth the effort: “at a gut level I sensed that understanding them was the key to the rest of my life.” It means one thing to read that you and all concepts are one part of a single, moving thing. It means another thing to confront the sublime: to feel that truth, sincerely. So then you learn not only by reading but by experiencing humanity — hence, Grace Lee Boggs lives out a fulfilling life of service and activism in Detroit. This should be comforting; a good activist is made by good living. If we are to demonstrate well then we are to demonstrate with the utmost care for life. No need to set yourself on fire.
If you or a loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts, please reach out to a professional. You are loved and deserve to love yourself. The National Suicide Hotline can be reached at 988. Call 607-255-5155 and ask to speak to an on-call counselor 24/7.
Eric Han is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at [email protected].