A Critical Analysis of Self-Immolation as an Effective Revolutionary Strategy

What ever happened to molotov cocktails?

The following video is inappropriate for a young child to view, and could likewise disturb the willfully blind.

Suicide is always stupid.

I admit, the first few times I watched the live-streamed footage of 25 year old Aaron Bushnell setting himself ablaze on a sunny DC sidewalk, I too felt a sense of admiration. After a while, however, much of that initial sensation turned out to be mostly shock. After all, this isn’t the sort of thing one hears about every day. . .

Except that it is.

The whole point of protesting the Zionist movement and military-industrial complex is exactly that humans are being burnt to a crisp en masse every day. Furthermore, it’s been happening for decades as the tripod result of Western imperialism, Zionist expansionism, and capitalist greed. The obvious difference is that the majority of the world’s burning and bombed weren’t dumb enough to do it to themselves, and of course, a public spectacle does not a revolution make.

You can’t be the spark and light the torch at the same time. Being the spark is simply lazy, accomplishing absolutely nothing while needlessly diverting attention from the corporeal injustices at hand. You know, like the kind where people who would very much prefer not to die are murdered like fish in a barrel by an internationally funded military might. Lighting the torch, on the other hand, carries severe personal consequences and prolonged suffering, such as what is being endured by journalist Julian Assange right now.

It is completely understandable to want to perceive Aaron Bushnell as a hero or a leader of some sort, especially when Western media and even public opinion openly accept the illegitimate state of Israel and its subsequent atrocities. To do so, however, would to condescend to those heroes who were willing to suffer for a cause, not over it. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther K. ing Jr., and even Gaddafi have far more for us to admire and learn from than a young man committing suicide and live-streaming it from his phone.

I don’t necessarily mean to say that everything about individuals such as Gaddafi should be emulated. I only point out that through strategic contemplation, long-term commitment, and constitutional perseverance, the efficacy of the actions of history’s true revolutionaries has always been demonstrated materially and at every level of their respective societies.

-the Shultz Report by M. Shultz