#aaronbushnell
Aaron Bushnell brother, we've got your back. We're not going to let you down. We weren't there for you when you made the ultimate sacrifice, but we're there for you now. We're with you brother. We're going to complete your mission. Free Palestine.
--- Scott Ritter, speaking at an event honoring Aaron Bushnell
Aaron Bushnell was a volunteer who helped the homeless.
"Bushnell had volunteered with the San Antonio Care Collective to offer support to the city's unhoused population, Lupe Barboza of the Care Collective told Texas Public Radio.
Barboza said Bushnell developed deep friendships with people living in encampments and would regularly purchase blankets, sweaters and snacks from a store on base to give out."
Muffle the protest
#AaronBushnell #freepalestine
So I found Aaron Bushnell’s reddit and went through his comments/posts. That young man was well read and stable as they can be. Nothing in his writings pointed to someone who was “unstable” or “brainwashed”.
He held leftist and anarchist ideals. He belong to the ACAB subreddit. He recognized the evil of the US Military even though he himself was apart of it. He hated TERFS and called out fatphobia. He understood the dangers of white supremecy and the evils of capitalism.
He had a cat. He liked the show fleabag and played elden ring.
Apparently in his will he wants to leave any money in his name to palestinian relief funds. He was trying to find a new owner for his cat.
Rest in power Aaron Bushnell. The world won’t forget & we sure as fuck won’t let the media paint you out to be some crazy conspiracy theorist who had no idea what he was doing.
-from #murphmurphthejerk
My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the US Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people in Palestine have been experiencing at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all.
This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
Free Palestine.
Aaron Bushnell
1999 - 2024
They tried to control the news but the activist pressure forced them to change
#AaronBushnell #Media #Activism #SocialMedia #Politics #Genocide #Israel
Suicide vs genocide: Rest in power, Aaron Bushnell
Bushnell’s extreme act of protest has put Western corporate media to shame.
On Sunday, February 25, 25-year-old active duty member of the United States Air Force Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in the US capital of Washington, DC, in a one-airman revolt against the US-backed slaughter currently being perpetrated by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip.
Over the past 143 days, Israel has killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave. In video footage recorded prior to and during his self-immolation, Bushnell states that he will “no longer be complicit in genocide” and that he is “about to engage in an extreme act of protest – but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers is not extreme at all”.
To be sure, Palestinians have long been accustomed to, well, burning to death at the hands of Israeli weaponry, ever since the state of Israel undertook to lethally invent itself on Palestinian land in 1948. The Israeli military’s use of skin-incinerating white phosphorus munitions in more recent years has no doubt contributed to the whole Palestinian “experience”.
After pertinently observing that US complicity in the genocide of Palestinians is “what our ruling class has decided will be normal”, Bushnell plants himself directly in front of the Israeli embassy gate – in full US military fatigues – and proceeds to douse himself with flammable liquid. As he rapidly burns to death, he repeatedly shouts: “Free Palestine”, while security personnel order him to get “on the ground”. One particularly helpful individual points a gun at the blaze.
In the aftermath of Bushnell’s self-immolation, the New York Times announced: “Man Dies After Setting Himself on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy in Washington, Police Say” – a rather strong contender, perhaps, for the most diluted and decontextualised headline ever. One wonders what folks would have said in 1965 had the US newspaper of record run headlines like: “Octogenarian Detroit Woman Dies After Setting Herself on Fire, Police Say – An Event Having Nothing Potentially To Do With Said Woman’s Opposition To The Vietnam War Or Anything Like That”.
Speaking of Vietnam War-related self-immolations, recall renowned US historian and journalist David Halberstam’s account of the 1963 demise in Saigon, South Vietnam, of the Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc: “Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly… I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered even to think”.
And while such an intense and passionate form of suicide is no doubt bewildering to many, genocide should be all the more appalling; as Bushnell himself said, self-immolation is nothing “compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine”, where people know all too well how quickly human beings burn.
In Bushnell’s case, the US political-media establishment appears to be doing its best to not only decontextualise but also posthumously discredit him. Time Magazine’s write-up, for example, admonishes that the US “Defence Department policy states that service members on active duty should ‘not engage in partisan political activity’” – as though actively abetting a genocide weren’t politically “partisan”.
Furthermore, the magazine specifies, US military regulations “prohibit wearing the uniform during ‘unofficial public speeches, interviews’”, and other activities.
Perhaps Bushnell’s ashes can be tried in military court.
At the bottom of the Time article, readers are charitably given the following instructions: “If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988” – which naturally implies that Bushnell was simply the victim of a “mental-health crisis” rather than someone making a most cogent and defiant political point in response to an extremely mentally disturbing political reality.
At the end of the day, anyone who is not experiencing a serious “mental-health crisis” over the genocide going down in Gaza with full US backing can be safely filed under the category of psychologically disturbed.
Of course, the US also perpetrated its very own genocide against Native Americans – another bloody phenomenon that has not been deemed worthy of diagnosis as a severe collective mental disturbance or anything of the sort. As per the official narrative, if you think it’s crazy for the US or its Israeli partner in crime to commit genocide, you’re the crazy one.
Coming from a family of US Air Force veterans myself – both of my grandfathers participated in the carnage in Vietnam – I have personally witnessed the psychological fallout that can attend service as empire’s executioners. Aaron Bushnell was meant to be a cog in the killing machine, but his principles cost him his life.
Indeed, according to a former colleague of Bushnell’s who worked with him to support the homeless community in San Antonio, Texas, he was “one of the most principled comrades I’ve ever known”. And while we journalists are supposed to be the ones speaking truth to power, suffice it to say that Bushnell has put Western corporate media to shame.
Rest in power, Aaron Bushnell.
#AaronBushnell #Protest #Gaza #Genocide #Israel #Politics #PeaceNow #SaveGaza #StopIsrael
#USpolitics #Palestine #Media
Je suis sur le point de m’engager dans un acte de protestation extrême, mais comparé à ce que les gens ont vécu en Palestine aux mains de leurs colonisateurs, ce n’est pas extrême du tout."
#AaronBushnell
"I paint because I love to paint, I need to paint, I have things I want to communicate and sometimes images are the best way to do it. My preferred mediums are oil and pastel. I have always had a fascination with impressionism, I try to paint in a similar style." [+]
~Aaron Bushnell