the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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There is no way of knowing that.
As far as I'm concerned, the best courses of action for US Military members in order are 1) commit treason (godspeed) 2) quit the military and use their social status as former military to advocate against imperialism and 3) exactly what this guy did. There are probably other options, too.
This article has a list of famous self-immolations. Some of them were quite effective. I will concede that there are many more fruitless self immolations that didn't make this list, however. https://time.com/6835364/self-immolation-history-israel-hamas-war/
if i were the cia id be spamming the airwaves with how great self immolation is so all the leftists would kill themselves
all of these instances of 'self immolation helping' had material circumstances that were already volatile. the idea that the immolation itself did anything is absurd, and all youre doing is encouraging vulnerable people to kill themselves
It won't do anything significant to change politics on Gaza, but it will magically convince a significant percentage of leftists to follow suit? Doubt.
its well known that suicides cause chain reactions of suicides, especially among vulnerable people
People over here are too shocked to notice that, they don't want to believe the guy that set himself on fire died in vain
yep. just wishful thinking, and a wasted life.
Hopefully no one follows through, a lot of western leftists have guilt about what their country is doing pure evil, Aaron being treated like a martyr might inspire people to follow his way, and the last thing I'd want as a global southerner is less leftists. And it's not like his case made that much of an impact, we're already seeing liberals calling him mentally ill and radical while western media hides his intents, only people who's his act meant anything to were already pro Palestine
They don't always cause a chain reaction. I'd have to read a study to find out the exact percentages.
Regardless, what you said above is unproveable. There is no contrafactual situation in which the Thích Quảng Đức self immolation in Saigon didn't happen. You cannot say with certainty it had no effect. And that's just the direct effects.
The knock-on effects of people questioning the US empire after that image of the monk on fire became widespread are impossible to calculate.
the fact that you cannot measure the effect and that the ultimate price is someones life makes it completely not worth it. honestly, i find you completely reprehensible and disgusting for continuing to defend this, im done here
you are 120% right, it seems that every now and then a western academic type who fucking loves science posts something weird, then gives everyone a headache by defending it using all the techniques of debate, obfuscation and deflection taught by higher education
like imagine how detached from reality a person has to be to double down on "AKSHUALLY ITS 'OKAY' THAT A HUMAN BEING HAD TO END THEIR FUCKING PRECIOUS LIFE ON THIS SHITHOLE CAPITALIST EARTH IN THE MOST PAINFUL WAY POSSIBLE AS A DESPERATE PLEA FOR AMERICA AND ISRAEL TO STOP DOING GENOCIDE!"
none of this is "okay", if we make it so, then we are throwing trash on the grave of Aaron Bushnell
*edited to prevent misunderstanding of intelligence agencies
I don't think anyone was saying it's a good thing that people are doing this. The debate seems to be over usefulness and/or effect.
That is true, however, the word OP used was "okay", not "good". The counterargument was that it is "not okay" because it is "useless".
I see that are two components to the argument here, 1) the implicit argument of whether suicide for political aims is "okay" or not (normalization), and 2) the explicit argument of whether it is "useful" or not.
As such, there is a contradiction here between the fact that suicide is not okay and should be discouraged as a general rule and the fact that Aaron Bushnell died as a martyr because he made the ultimate sacrifice.
Maybe I'm delusional and imagining 1) but this to me is the main issue. Thus, doubling down to defend 2) without acknowledging 1) is strange, so OP should avoid this by clarifying their position.
For instance, BRG, while acknowledging the gravity and impact of Aaron's actions, took care in his streams to discourage suicide, saying: "A leftist is more useful to Palestine alive than dead."
Hmmm I agree with you mostly but have another lingering thought swirling around in my head.
What if martyrdom is the collective stepping stone to violent militant action?
If we look at the last 30 years of political activism, there has been a slow process of the collective "people" trying every political tactic available, slowly deeming each one ineffective and then moving onto the next more radical option. Going all the way back to Occupy Wall Street I've watched the american left move more left, and more radical, with each and every attempt and failure at some new tactic.
People burning themselves alive is probably one of the final steps before people move onto guns and bombs.
I'm not suggesting it should be advocated for, it's not going to succeed, but I have a feeling this process of the collective slowly checking off every available tactic except violence is a process that will play out whether we want it to or not before violence becomes an option the collective is ready for.
We're all mostly hoping for a revolution... Well, "vulnerable people" die in revolutions. Lots of people usually die in revolutions. Bloodless ones are the exception. Personally, I advocate for diversity of tactics, even if some of those tactics are extreme.
But guess what? Lots of people are CURRENTLY dying in Gaza and in the US (denied healthcare) and all over the world due to LACK OF a revolution in tbe imperial core. It's emotionally jarring to see somebody die in a gruesome way, I understand that. Everyone will have their own reaction. It may even demotivate some comerades. But the status quo has its own gruesome, insidious costs like 2000 covid deaths a week. They're just not "shocking" like this one. Let's not privilege this one life over the possibility of agitating to save the 2 million in Gaza whose lives are in the balance.
If you've watched his last words, this person was clearly of sober mind and thought this was their best lever to pull for change. They probably thought about it a lot before doing so, and it wasn't on a whim.
Speaking personally, I am inspired by their sacrifice, and it is spurring me to do more for the Palestinian cause and do more to move towards communism and away from barbarism.
Also, one final clarification. I think that this particular incident has a greater chance of being significant historically because he is a member of the US military. I would not recommend or condone a non-military person to follow in his footsteps because I dont think it would be likely to be effective. Like it or not, military members command a certain gravitas and social status in US society that can be used to great effect, as we are seeing here. This amplified the media coverage greatly.
If you look at how Chinese people understand the Chinese revolution, their timeline starts at the beginning of the Century of Humiliation. In total, they went through:
feudal rebellion (Taiping rebellion)
feudal reforms (Self-Strengthening Movement)
spontaneous anti-imperialist struggle (Boxer rebellion)
bourgeois revolution (Xinhai revolution)
student-led uprising (May 4th Movement)
social democracy (Sun Yat-sen's KMT and the Three Principles of the People)
right-wing nationalism (Chiang Kai-shek's KMT)
civil war (Chinese Civil War)
anti-imperialist war (Second Sino-Japanese War)
Before even arriving at Communist revolution, and even with the CPC, there's pre-Mao CPC which tried to copy the Soviets and Mao-era CPC that was able to forge their own path through the painful lessons learned from everything up to that point. The Chinese masses also politically developed and matured so that while the Chinese masses of the 1850s century thought a new feudal dynasty with a new emperor was sufficient, the Chinese masses after a century of political development and maturation understood the necessity of socialism.
That’s a little out of hand I think.
How is it not? They are arguing that suicide is useful for political ends, particularly in the case of self immolation. The logical conclusion is that more people should do it
But they didn’t.
They're arguing that this one is good and the context is right, though. That means the context can be right in the future
The context for this one is right though? Not all self immolations are worthwhile endeavors, but this one has the chance to maybe do some good is what I’m getting from this conversation. The guy was faced with an impossible choice because he was being forced to go assist the Israelis from what I understand. And since he was part of some kind of intelligence unit in the Air Force he would have been complicit in acquiring the targeting data for Israeli bombers had he gone. I don’t know what happens if you just tell the government you don’t want to go, I would assume some kind of court marshal or something. So instead of being silenced in some kind of military prison he decided to take his own life in support of the people he was ordered to kill. Will it change anything? I have no idea this is the most coverage I’ve ever seen of a self immolation in my lifetime, but it doesn’t really seem like the other person is saying everyone should emulate the act or anything.
Suicide is definitely not the way to go there, better to be like
Well that might be your opinion, but it clearly wasn’t theirs. They were being asked to do something that directly went against their moral code and they didn’t think being silenced was a good compromise so they took their dying breath speaking for the Palestinian people as someone who was being asked to help kill them. Think whatever you want about it, but it was their choice and we should show some respect to it either way considering the circumstances. If it starts up some copycats then maybe your opinion will have weight behind it, but until then it just looks like you’re shitting on someone who was put in a tough position and decided they’d rather die than being complicit in imperial genocide or be silenced through military justice.
You sicken me. Fucking disgusting
Nothing will come of this. Just one more dead nice person
The choices were go to prison and shut up or kill Palestinians. Shitting on the dead because their suicide is not going to be the spark that saves the Palestinians is kinda fucked. If you don’t agree then that’s fine, but I’m disengaging at this point. Hope you get over yourself at some point and realize people do things based on what they think is right and not if you personally agree with them or not. Go be mad at someone else.
Sort of tortured binary thinking there.
There are more options than
It's ultimately the christo-leftist self sacrifice ideology that we see on display here. These people fetishize the idea of sacrifice even when it accomplishes nothing. It's also telling that Bushnell had just severed connections with a Christian cult. This has nothing to do with respecting the dead and more to warn people not to fucking kill themselves. You can do so much good in your life and it's possible and worth it to live so you can feel happy.
I've also had many many friends kill themselves over the years, as is common for a trans "elder". I'm sick of seeing good people die to no benefit and I'm sick of seeing ideologies disseminated that justifies it.
Maybe there were other options, maybe there wasn’t I don’t know but if someone more knowledgeable knows something I’m all ears. Ultimately whatever ended up happening was going to change the course of their life forever and in the end they chose to end their life in service to the Palestinian people speaking about the injustice they face. It makes no sense to lambast them for it just because it might be in vain.