In February, Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC.
A recent profile of the 25-year-old, who died hours after setting fire to himself while screaming “Free Palestine,” reveals a disturbed backstory replete with radicalism and activism. It’s a cautionary tale about where falling prey to ideological narratives can lead.
And the subsequent celebration of him as a martyr reveals the derangement of his fellow pro-Palestine extremists.
Simon van Zuylen-Wood, writing for New York Magazine, traced Bushnell’s history in chilling detail.
Raised on a Christian commune in Cape Cod, where individual egos were meant to be broken down and children separated from their families, Bushnell was steeped in extremism and radical selflessness from an early age.
But his political trajectory, propelled by social media and internet rabbit holes, is one that young men can fall into online.
While much has rightfully been made of the radicalization of young men on the far right, it’s a pull that spans the political spectrum.
It’s a path that led Bushnell to become a self-described anarchist who policed language on online forums and was always careful to profess his (he/him) pronouns.
According to New York Magazine, he was with a leftist organizer friend when he heard of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The reaction? “‘We were like, ‘Cool, f–k yea, they broke out of their prison.’”
Oct. 7 propelled Bushnell into obsession, and he began compulsively writing about the conflict on Reddit, even posting 20 times on Christmas Day.
He dubbed democracy “a sham that was invented by the first great slave state of history, and not coincidentally adopted by the last,” referring to the United States and Israel. He also described Hamas as an “anti-colonial resistance organization” and Israel as an “ethnonationalist, settler-colonial apartheid state.”
It’s the strange language of someone who spends a lot of time in the echo chamber of online forums.
In one post, Bushnell snapped at a Reddit user who advocated for the United States to help stop the war, for indulging “the white imperialist mindset that it is our duty and burden to save the world from barbarity.”
As van Zuylen-Wood writes, his reasoning was simplistic and binary, leading him to believe Palestinians have the right to resist Israel by any means necessary.
“No aggression against the Israeli colony can be condemned by non-Palestinians,” the serviceman wrote on Reddit. “It’s their land and their people that are being aggressed. The tactics of defense are up to them.”
That oppressor-oppressed dichotomy — which has been popularized by neo-Marxists and the social justice movement — is often alluring to young radicals.
Analyzing complex conflicts through the lens of “good guys” and “bad guys” affords an activist a simplistic righteousness, and absolves them of the obligation to dig deeper and actually engage with both sides of an issue.
The dichotomy has been on broad display since October 7 — from students on campuses screaming “from the river to the sea” and heralding a “student intifada” all the way to the extreme of Bushnell dousing himself in gasoline and striking a lighter to his pants.
The embrace of simplistic narratives also led to the celebration of Bushnell by fellow culty extremists, who have lauded him as an “American hero.”
“He knew he had to go extreme to pierce through the censorship of the Zionist owned media,” one X user wrote. “I salute Aaron Bushnell and his extreme bravery and humanity!”
T-shirts with his face on it have been spotted at pro-Palestine rallies. He was lauded and elegized in an article called “Burnt Offerings” in the publication n+1. A street was even named after him in Jericho.
His death should not be celebrated, nor should it be ignored. But insights can be gleaned for how to prevent similar copycat displays of such extreme proportions.
Bushnell’s story is a loud alarm bell, reminding us all where radicalism, fueled by the internet and pervasive ideology, can lead.
