An American historian’s reflections on self-immolation as an act of protest

Dissent is central to American history. Indeed, the United States itself is a product of dissent. Colonists protesting against Parliament’s taxation policies in the 18th century moved from petitions to boycotts to demonstrations to property destruction to outright rebellion against the Crown.

After independence was won, the right to dissent was considered so important that the framers of the Constitution inscribed it into the First Amendment.

Throughout the subsequent history of the nation, Americans have protested for every cause imaginable - the abolition of slavery, workers’ rights to organise, women’s suffrage, civil rights for Black Americans, and equal rights for Latinos, Native Americans and LGBTQ+ individuals.

Every war in American history has had its protesters, from the Revolution to the Vietnam War, from the Civil War to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Throughout all these movements, dissenters have employed a wide variety of means to protest for their cause. Writing letters to the press, signing petitions to lawmakers, giving speeches, organising teach-ins, participating in demonstrations, designing posters, staging political dramas in theatres and on the streets, and singing songs of protest.

If their voices are not heard, protesters engage in acts of civil disobedience or defiantly break laws they consider unjust or they might go further and engage in property destruction, riots, looting, flagrant acts of violence, and in some cases taking up arms.

From the Boston Tea Party to the Earth Liberation Front’s destruction of a ski lodge, from Shays’ Rebellion in 1786 to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.

From Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831 to the torching of a police station in Minneapolis in 2020 during the George Floyd protests.

Many activists have exposed themselves to bodily harm during protests or political action campaigns. One thinks of civil rights volunteers on the Freedom Rides in 1961 or those risking their lives in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964.

There have been times when dissenters around the world have put their lives on the line by engaging in hunger strikes—Alice Paul in 1917, Mahatma Gandhi repeatedly from the 1920s-40s, Cesar Chavez in 1968, Holger Meins in 1974, Bobby Sands in 1981.

Seldom, however, have dissenters expressed their outrage against injustice by deliberately committing suicide, especially through such unbearably painful means as Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation on February 25, protesting Israel’s war against Hamas, which he perceived as a war on Gaza.

Self-immolation is perhaps the most attention-grabbing protest a dissenter can perform, and it has a rich history.

One of the most indelible images of modern protest was the self-immolation of Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Dúc on June 11, 1963. Thích Quang Dúc, and a procession of fellow monks, marched down a busy street in Saigon. Thích Quang Dúc sat down in the lotus position and began meditating. Monks chanted Buddhist chants while one of them poured gasoline over him and lit a match.

Thích Quang Dúc was instantly transformed into a pillar of fire, but he did not move or react to the flames until his body toppled over. Photographs and newsreel footage of the event shocked people around the world, especially Americans, many of whom were not even aware of what was happening in Vietnam.

During that summer, another five monks followed his example to protest against -South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem’s persecution of Buddhists. The impact of these protests helped bring about the coup that deposed Diem and eventually led to further US involvement and escalation of the disastrous war in Vietnam.

This has inspired others to use self-immolation as a compelling weapon for protest. In November 1965, anti-war protester Norman Morrison, a Quaker, committed self-immolation at a demonstration at the Pentagon outside Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s office window.

Antiwar protests in the United States intensified dramatically for the rest of the decade. In Prague, after the Russians militarily crushed the democratising "Prague Spring" movement in Czechoslovakia, 20-year-old Charles University student Jan Palach committed self-immolation in January 1969.

His act reverberated over the next 20 years, as anti-Soviet resistance in Czechoslovakia increased and eventually led to the 1989 Velvet Revolution precipitating the end of the Cold War.

More recently, in December 2010, a young street vendor in Tunisia named Mohammad Bouazizi committed self-immolation as an act of defiance and despair against the harassment and humiliation he suffered at the hands of the autocratic regime.

This was the spark that set off the so-called "Arab Spring," as citizens of other Arab countries took to the streets protesting for freedom from despotic rule.

Climate activists who despaired that politicians would never heed their demands to enact laws to mitigate the devastating effects of climate change also grabbed attention for their cause through the means of self-immolation.

David Buckel set himself on fire in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in 2018 and Wynn Alan Bruce did so in front of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, DC in 2022.

With so many other methods of protest available, what is it that provokes individuals like Aaron Bushnell to resort to such a painful way of protesting? Clearly, it is a last resort. All other means of convincing people, whether the public at large or those at the top of the power structure, have been exhausted without effect.

Self-immolation will surely garner attention. But it is more than that. The individual feels a sense of personal responsibility so deeply that he can no longer tolerate being a part of a society that refuses accountability and refuses to find a solution.

Aaron Bushnell served in the US Air Force as an active-duty airman and I imagine that he was quite aware of the consequences of military activity.

Perhaps this heightened his sense of personal responsibility. The despair that Bushnell must have felt at the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza was so overwhelming that he decided he could no longer live in a world that tolerated such atrocities.

Is anyone listening to Bushnell's plea?