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I was looking at his reddit account yesterday and the posts of the reddit account match the information of the article. Maybe the intent of the article is to smear him. I don't think that him being an anarchist or previously a radical christian devalues his action.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/02/26/israeli-embassy-airman-fire-death-gaza/
https://archive.ph/flTlpHis username on twitch was lillyanarkitty when he streamed himself self-immolating. It was found that he had previously changed the name from "acebush1" using twitch moderator tools. I tried to use the tool and it said I had to buy a subscription. I'm posting the link anyway. If you have a subscription, you can see it. https://twitch-tools.lolarchiver.com/username_changelog?name=lillyanarkitty
The username acebush1 matches his real name. Aaron BUSHnell. AceBUSH1
On instagram, the account for acebush1 has 0 photos, 28 friends, and says "Aaron Bushnell" on the profile page. https://www.instagram.com/acebush1/
On soundcloud, an account called acebush1 uploaded a single audio track 10 years ago. It says like: Hi I'm aaron bushnell welcome to my podcast. https://soundcloud.com/acebush1
Based on all of that information. I believe that this was his reddit account. https://old.reddit.com/user/acebush1/
acebush1 posted in many anarchist subreddits, posted in airforce subreddits, etc.
2-3 years ago he posted about being a radical christian, which aligns with the headline of the article.
He posted about hating Marxist-Leninists a few times.
He has many posts in the airforce subreddit telling people that airforce members should be able to use their airforce healthcare for gender affirming care, ie gender transitioning. Some people on hexbear and twitter were suggesting that he might be interested in transitioning based on the username lillyanarkitty. I don't know.
He has many posts on different fantasy series subreddits, such as LoTR. I'm mentioning this because the WAPO article also says that he loved LOTR.
He also had posts saying that he had read anarchist literature, so he probably didn't become an anarchist from reading memes.Is the washington post article trying to smear him? maybe. probably yes.
Was Aaron Bushnel an anarchist? based on his twitch username that he streamed himself being named "lillyanarkitty" and his alleged reddit account. I would say he was an anarchist.
Does this devalue his message at all? No. He is correct about Gaza.
edit / It looks like reddit has deleted all his posts or shadowbanned him or something. You can still see the posts on the profile but if you click "permalink" on any of his comments, it says deleted.
Repeating stuff I've posted elsewhere, but it's relevant. Here are my own observations from the account.
Looks like he lost a job during early COVID and joined the military because people gotta eat. Nobody is immune to propaganda.
His turn toward leftism was rooted in his Christianity; it appears to have started with getting properly acquainted with the real MLK.
The works of MLK pushed him further into theory, and the hatred of the military hierarchy they were forced into cemented them as an anarchist. Some of their more recent posting history was trying to educate other enlisted on getting conscientious objector status.
I didn't particularly get the vibe that he was an egg (from anything other than the twitch handle), but he definitely was a loud supporter of trans rights. I assume that that led to a lot of disillusionment with his faith.
Also, his posting history makes it clear that he has fairly recently realized his childhood was abusive.
The twitch handle is extremely eggy but they could also have just been extremely based and had good username taste
Maybe he just thought it was funny. My username doesn't mean anything, and I randomize them on every website if I'm able.
Yeah my username on Twitch is WishIwasagirl1917, it doesn't mean anything
He posted about hating Marxist-Leninists a few times.
Doing this while being in the airforce is so weird.
I will still support and go to bat for him/her but come the fuck on.
His comments on reddit seem pretty based otherwise. One of his comments wrt ideology:
I would say if I have to work with non-anarchists, I would rather work with less ideologically committed folks than with dogmatic adherents of any hierarchical ideology. The “I just think social services and wealth redistribution is neat” social democrat is better (in some ways at least) than the “THE PROLETARIAT WILL BE SAVED BY THE VICTORY OF MY IDEOLOGICALLY PURE PARTY” ML. By the same token, the casual “I just like reading Lenin” ML can be better than the “Revolution is an immature and uncivilized idea, capitalism is the best system actually and just needs a few tweaks” social democrat. The difference lies in the potential for the less ideologically committed individuals to participate in anarchistic tactics and be radicalized in a libertarian direction.
I think if he had a few more years he would have probably cooled off on the ML hate, even if he wouldn't have become an ML himself. We all figure these things out at our own paces.
I just don't particularly understand how you can be part of the strictest hierarchical structure that exists, understand how efficient it is and what we are fighting, and then somehow lambast MLs for wanting a strict hierarchical structure for the revolutionary party because we understand what we're fighting against.
It's just so contradictory.
This assumes they see it as efficient. They hated it. They chafed under it.
Maybe you can think "this isn't efficient" but anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes can see how it's more efficient than nobody taking or giving any orders at all.
Doesn't have to be efficient, just has to be more efficient than the alternatives.
If someone can come up with something more efficient I will immediately switch to it.
Maybe efficiency isn't everything. Maybe you could try to see how, having grown up under one hierarchical boot, and then working inside of another, they could feel that hierarchy will always be oppressive and therefore should be struggled against.
Efficiency is everything in a zero-sum war between capitalism and revolutionaries.
You either do shit better than them or you lose. It's really as simple as that. The revolutionary forces need to become strong enough to overcome the defence forces of capitalism.
There are two ways to this:
- Building a more efficient revolutionary army than the army of the state.
- The army of the state becoming so resource-stretched that it becomes weaker than the revolutionary army.
Or most likely: A combination of the above.
You can try and be completely disorganised and just hope that the state collapses so fucking hard that it can't even fight a leaderless revolution with no hierarchy. But seriously consider that that isn't going to be allowed to happen by foreign capitalists who WILL intervene when the moment of collapse occurs if things get that bad. More likely things wouldn't ever get that bad too, which is why you need the vanguard to begin with, to push things truly over the edge, to place a thumb on the scales.
I think the work you are looking for is effective. You really don’t understand military structure if you think they will be more efficient than your cells.
Efficiency is everything because if your system is less efficient you will be destroyed by the more efficient one
So the Soviet Union was less efficient than the US, got it.
The soviet union was less efficient in that it allowed compradors to take power and end it. It was a less efficient proletarian-dictatorship than the rival bourgeoise-dictatorship. Its principle mistake were structural mistakes allowing the liberals into power.
Yeah having all of their cities and a quarter of their population destroyed will do that.
Under Stalin and Lenin it was extremely efficient, growing and developing the economy at extreme rates unseen in human history up that point until the German invasion of WW2. The destruction of WW2 and the Liberal-revisionist take-over of the post-war government after Stalin's death led to liberalization and stagnation right at the time where they needed to recover the most via command planned economy. Kruschev's social imperialism and revisionism led to the Sino-Soviet split.
There was a failure there, a failure in purging out the social-imperialists and revisionists like Krushchev and his ilk.
Yeah assuming that the better system always wins out is pure ideology. Everything is circumstance. A bunch of crabs that recently learned how to make spears and developed minor mathematical capabilities could defeat a nuclear nation given the right circumstances. And whoever is the Victor is not automatically correct.
AES is in many ways a good term, especially because it reminds us we should materially support the projects that actually currently threaten global capitalism, but the implicit ideology that “survival = more morally correct” is incorrect at it’s core. I’m an ML because I actually think the vanguard party is a good idea from a theory perspective and a historical perspective, not because the vanguard party winning all the time is morally right. Morality has nothing to do with it. And if you were to bring morality into the equation, I would actual agree with anarchists because the society they describe is both possible and better than one that is newly socialist, I just don’t think it’s possible right now.
Regardless it’s very evident it would smear every anarcho-commune on earth in a millisecond if it felt like it. You cannot compete with organized imperialism with rifles and a can do attitude.
What…
I mean he clearly regretted joining and felt guilty about being part of that structure, considering some of his last words were "I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide"
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Yeah, I only became ML after actually doing real shit; I don't think he had the chance.
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The difference is that the US military is subservient to civilian authority. In the case of a vanguard party, that strict hierarchical structure would be controlling the civilian population instead.
It's entirely possible to recognize the capacity of a command structure to accomplish immense goals, and for that exact reason, to insist that such a structure remain subservient to a more moderate majority, for fear of the harm it could cause if unrestrained.
In the case of a vanguard party, that strict hierarchical structure would be controlling the civilian population instead.
The vanguard party would be replacing the currently ruling bourgeois parties. It is a civil authority, but unlike the current system, it would represent the population.
That contradicts the comment I replied to, which emphasized the strict hierarchical nature of the hypothetical vanguard party, comparing it to the military. Enforcing a strict hierarchy inherently reduces the representation of a majority of the population in favor of the few at the top of the hierarchy.
There's no contradiction. The people are at the very top of the hierarchy, the people except the capitalists and oligarchs that is
If the people are at the top of the hierarchy, there is no hierarchy 😂
The US military is subservient to civilian authority? What.
I mean they do serve the interests of oligarchy which are civilians, so technically correct.
Hey it’s really you who wanted this genocide don’tcha know?
Yes. The president, a civilian, is the commander of the armed forces.
The president famously never has any personal connections with the military
Such a laughably simple take it doesn't warrant a response.
The difference is that the US military is subservient to civilian authority. In the case of a vanguard party, that strict hierarchical structure would be controlling the civilian population instead.
Go back to sh.itjust.works.
this dude was maybe a year or two off from being an ML. Once you're at this stage of opinion, things tend to snowball. Shoulda popped onto his stream and paid him in Twitch currency to read Blackshirts and Reds
Americans really just can’t help themselves but be anti-communist. It’s so deep in their bones
I mean he clearly regretted joining and felt guilty considering some of his last words were "I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide"
Does this devalue his message at all?
Why even would it?
Anarchist is a bad word in America. Americans think Anarchist means "chaotic and violent". Usually when the US media calls somebody an Anarchist, they mean that the person is an enemy of the US government, not that they read Kropotkin or something.
The other narrative angle that the media tries to push is that he switched from one "extreme ideology" to another. The headline mentions that he grew up on a christian compound. This terminology "christian compound" is associated with cults. Americans also believe that anarchism is an extreme ideology because they can't imagine a society without the state and they think Anarchy is chaos. The implication of the headline is that he was prone believing extreme ideologies and therefore not a logical actor.
Well yeah I know all that, but still
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I think it would because most Americans don't actually know what anarchism is. The average person off the street will give you the dictionary definition of anarchy and say it's when you have no laws and can do whatever you want. When they hear this guy was an "anarchist" they'll instantly write him off the same way we instantly write off libertarians.
Great sleuthing, comrade! At times like this it's hard to cut through the mountains of bullshit out there
I wanted to find out if he had posted on Hexbear. I saw a post where he said that the chapotraphouse podcast were assholes. He had posted some stuff about lemmy when reddit disabled the API last year but I can't figure out if he had a lemmy account.
Reddit is starting to delete his posts or something. This is a screenshot from duckduckgo cache, I blacked out text that was a different redditor. This is the comment where he said that chapo were assholes.
He might have had a lemmy account but I think he probably didn't have a hexbear account because he disliked chapo.
Same, I went digging through hexbear, .world, kbin, blahaj, raddle, no luck
I saw a post where he said that the chapotraphouse podcast were assholes.
Based. The chapos would probs agree with him too.
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Something really jarring about how he's talking about video games and TV shows less than a week before he killed himself. Like it's so casual and unrelated. Wonder if he'd planned back then what he was going to do?
posts from san antonio about a year ago and a couple from atlanta.
But who knows what distro he was living in.. I am seeing fedora, popOS, ZorinOS and linux mint. There is Gnome and XFCE.
And to keep it topical I just got an opportunity to recommend an anarchist book to a couple of MLs. What should I recommend? : AnarchistLiterature (no good answers)
Anarchist Literature
The Great French Revolution by Kropotkin was a favorite of Lenin. I'm also very partial to the works of Malatesta, the Italian Anarchist.
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