Surveillance video obtained by NBC10 Boston appears to show a man setting himself on fire outside the Four Seasons hotel in downtown Boston, in what witnesses described as a deeply upsetting scene. The incident happened around 8:15 p.m. Wednesday. There was a large police presence as investigators c...
Yeah I get it. I know it’s pointless and accomplishes nothing, but I get it. Yes you can walk in the street, go to some org meetings, or maybe even eventually put on a red jumpsuit and break some drones, but I entirely understand the horror and hopelessness that leads to this.
The caption did mention the Israeli consulate. Still, why would they frame it in terms of the Four Seasons hotel when it clearly is about the Consulate? Inventing Reality?
Before I would've said it seems to be the action people take when they're totally dedicated to non-violence even against people actively involved in genocide. But even that other dude was former military, so I don't know.
I'd much rather these people go down raising hell than just go down. If they're going to sacrifice themselves because they see no other way then the adventurist sacrifice is better than this, it at least might scare the shit out of the bourgeoisie.
Maybe it might be useful doming some major gentile zionist, but I think traditional adventurist actions like that tend to just be used as a pretext for cracking down on the left, while self-immolation so far is not, so I think it's really the less harmful option.
Maybe if you can get an Israeli general or something, just because disrupting their operation might actually sink them at this point, while anyone could die in the US and the arms would keep flowing.
But really both suck and should be denounced as anti-social behavior.
Self immolation in the Imperial Core is an expression of profound helplessness, and speaks to the utter inability of the left to provide those people with a comprehensive ideological framework.
The U.S. State has done such an effective job of destroying revolutionary movements that those who could be drawn to a clear-headed Marxist perspective cannot find purchase; there are no revolutionary organizations that are not captured.
Blame Trotsky and the New Left I suppose (after you blame the State for the murder of the Black Panthers and the original BLM leaders).
There's literally nothing for people to do. If you do adventurism you get denounced as a fed and the state uses it as an excuse to strengthen itself. If you immolate yourself you get denounced as a fed and news of it widely ignored. If you try to join a group the group is denounced as feds and the state uses the group existing as an excuse to strengthen itself.
I think self immolation is a intensely contradictory thing.
Because on the one hand I don't want people to do it, at all, I don't want the people who have the courage and the compassion to do it, to do it and die. These people were comrades. And it often feels like it doesn't even tip the scale against the atrocities that it is in protest of.
On the other the people who do are heroes. I'm not religious but while we argued about Bushnell here, the Palestinians, the Yemeni, all the oppressed people fighting this genocide immediately recognised Bushnell as a hero and martyr. It shows the oppressed people that even in the heart of the Great Satan, people support their righteous cause.
Like it's complicated and I would like it if the cause of it was not happening, rather than just self-immolation was not happening.
People were shit talking Bushnell in the original thread when it happened. But I think it can arguably be more effective than fragging folks in the building or something. Obviously, encouraging suicide isn't good as a standard. The people in charge won't care either way. But if voters work mostly on vibes, which they often do, this paints a picture of "peaceful person harmed only themselves to protest the government's evil actions" instead of letting people handwave them away by focusing on them hurting other people instead.
People don't generally know what Thích Quảng Đức was protesting, but given images of a burning monk, they assume the people who let that happen and that prompted the action are the villains. Of course, there's tons of people who handwave away people like in the OP as just those with mental illness already prone to suicide. So it could really go either way.
If OP is another Bushnell, I wish they hadn't died and had lived to continue fighting alongside other comrades, but I respect they care enough about something to go to these lengths because it often feels like nobody cares at all.
hats off to the CIA if they MKUltra someone into self immolation. usually the best they can do is to pay idiots money to do violent acts in (country the US doesn't like) and they fail like 90% of the time
I think this happens more when there is no actual political project to give oneself to where your efforts will count for something. The symptom of catatonic distress in the face of flesh eating bacteria