Don't light yourself on fire

In 1963, a monk named Thich Quang Duc self-immolated to protest the persecution of Buddhists in South Vietnam. It was an integral part of a coordinated demonstration by about 350 monks and nuns to demand religious equality from President Ngo Dihn Diem.

Duc’s final moments were captured in a now famous photograph by Associated Press journalist Malcolm Browne. The image shocked the world, drew attention to the treatment of Buddhists in South Vietnam and eventually lead the CIA to sponsor a coup that ousted and killed President Diem.

Duc’s actions were seen as a pivotal moment in the Buddhist Conflict — part of the Vietnam war that preceded American troops actually landing on the ground. Although Vietnamese monks self-immolated on a semi-routine basis before Duc, his actions — in combination with the striking photograph — left a lasting impact on the world’s collective psyche. He not only helped turn the tide in his own conflict, but also spawned imitators across the globe.

The latest to use Duc’s tactic in protest is Aaron Bushnell, a 25 year-old active service member in the US Military. Bushnell lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy last Sunday to protest the genocide in Gaza. He isn’t the first person to self-immolate since the conflict kicked into overdrive on October 7. Two other people have done it, although Bushnell’s actions seemed to receive more media attention.

Self-immolation is a drastic but not uncommon means of activism. Climate protestor Wynn Bruce set himself on fire at the steps of the US Supreme Court in April, 2022. Earlier that year, a man in Australia burned himself and his car to protest vaccine mandates. Unfortunately for those men, neither of them seemed to make much of an impact on what they were protesting.

Hopefully Bushnell’s story is different, but I’m not holding my breath.

We live in a much different world than Thich Quang Duc. Information travels faster. Duc’s burning body was probably the most shocking thing printed in mass media that decade. Nowadays, high-definition video of jarring atrocities is just a link click away. If real-life footage of what’s happening on the ground in Gaza isn’t enough to change someone’s mind, I doubt a self-immolation video from 5,000 miles away will do the trick.

We’re constantly being inundated with desensitizing depictions of graphic violence. We also get a non-stop stream of opinions and “hot takes” in the comments section of these videos. Every polarizing topic eventually devolves into a handful of Balkanized internet niches screaming at each other from their echo chambers.

I wasn’t alive in the 60’s to see how the general consensus formed. That said, I’ve been around long enough to see meaningful public discourse noticeably erode, thanks to social media and 24 Hour Cable News. Immediately after Bushnell died, the people who didn’t want you to hear his message started dehumanizing him. They said he was mentally unstable and led astray by disinformation. The bootlickers who wanted that to be true believed and repeated it ad nauseum. Factions formed in comments sections, the debate raged for a couple of days, and then people moved on to the next thing.

Social media has conditioned us to crave the little hit of dopamine we get from “likes” and “replies”. We no longer stop to think about the humanity of a man lighting himself on fire in the name of ending genocide. We head right to Twitter and decide who we’re going to pick a fight with. Even more tragically, something else inevitably comes along to fuel the flame war, and everyone forgets what they were passionately arguing about two days earlier.

My view of this is admittedly pessimistic. The Bushnell story was shared among some of my more apolitical friend groups. It was truly shocking, and hopefully served as a catalyst for people in my corner of the world — who I know see a lot of anti-genocide content — to dig deeper on this issue. On Thursday, an activist group of Military Veterans opposing the US government’s involvement in the Gaza conflict called Vets About Face burned their fatigues in solidarity with Bushnell. Obviously, his actions made some sort of impact.

I’m simply worried it wasn’t enough to justify his life. My timeline leans fairly progressive. Bushnell’s self-immolation may have got people talking, but did it change any minds? It’s hard to say. The veteran activist group who burned their uniforms, About Face, was already protesting against the genocides. Their symbolic gesture is a powerful one, but is it impactful? Again, it’s hard to tell.

I can only see what my algorithm presents me. I don’t know how the “other side” perceives this. Nobody gets the same morning paper or evening news broadcast anymore. We live in wildly insulated bubbles, specially curated for our interests and coloured with nonstop commentary. Consensus building is (or at the very least, seems) impossible. Someone making the ultimate sacrifice for their ideals already feels like just another drop in the 24-hour content bucket. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to try and disprove me.