Yesterday I was shocked by the news that a young man named Aaron Bushnell had died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In a video which I did not watch he is said to have screamed the words “Free Palestine” as his body burst into flames. I did not watch the video because I do not know what effect watching such material repeatedly on social media has on us. It may be nothing.
And I actually sort of think it probably is nothing because of the way that information is displayed on social media. Even the most shocking images are framed in such a way that they are made to look inconsequential and ephemeral. (I use “look” here rather than “seem” on purpose, because I am referring explicitly to how visual information is framed rather than how it is narrativised. These things are linked but they are not exactly the same. In a gallery, for example, the frame is the literal frame around the painting and the position it has on the wall relative to the viewer, the colour of the wall, the lighting in the room, the fact the painting is in a gallery, and so on. The narrative is these elements and also the curation of the exhibition, the other works which are shown, the wall text, and so on). Still I don’t know that for sure, it is just my hunch. And I never took up smoking when I was a teenager and now when I look around at the people I know who are trying to quit I am glad smoking never became part of my emotional landscape. I do feel it can be helpful to sit slightly back from certain things.
Also I think that I want to think that I would still find it shocking to watch a video of a man setting himself on fire on Instagram. Maybe it would feel bad or strange to watch it and discover that I do not.
I find there is so much dishonesty about shock and disgust, and whether material is truly challenging or really quite comforting because it fits into a well established narrative. I want to try and keep a sense of whether I am shocked or challenged by something or whether I think I should be. Why does this matter? Maybe it doesn’t. But to me it feels important to be aware of what my emotional response to material truly is.
When I started reading Irmgard Keun’s novels about life in Nazi Germany last year I felt I understood more fully why. She articulates the fanaticism normal people earnestly felt for fascist aims. Or thought they felt. Which is it? Could they tell the difference? Could you? To put it another way: What are you horrified by? What are your dreams? If these are questions you can’t answer for yourself (truly for yourself) I think something has gone wrong.
The idea that material which is entirely banal, prosaic and expected is somehow affronting, challenging or anti-establishment is one of the major marketing devices. Lots of influencers brand themselves this way: As a person who is “speaking truth” when they are really espousing safe, focus group tested sentiments. I notice this a lot in the world of novels and films too. You see this as much with the marketing around a book like Yellowface as with a film like Eileen (Law and Order Special Victims Unit, I might remind you, was one of the most popular shows in America for decades).
This is because such material, while unchallenging, fulfils the desire many people have to feel that they have been confronted and to advertise their willingness to do so. Tick that box without having to really unsettle yourself. Do people in general react to challenging material by saying “Oh this challenged me, I feel good about that, thank you”? When the entire establishment is saying they loved something because it had an anti establishment message, what does that say? To me these feel like questions which barely get asked. I suppose they are uncomfortable ones.
Aaron Bushnell’s decision to set himself on fire is genuinely, deliberately confronting. (Even if the video, in the context of everything else on social media, may not be). I see it as his attempt to reflect the pointless mass murder in Gaza back at us, in a way which may make it seem freshly surprising and horrifying, instead of allowing it to fade into background noise. His profile added to this. In the video he said he was a serving US Army Airman. (I am not totally sure if this is true, I have no reason to assume it is not but prefer to hew on the side of caution when I respond to something like this). Not the kind of person you might expect to set themselves on fire to protest a military offensive. But then, is there a kind of person who we would expect to do this? Do we have a script for this? Or do we have to reckon with the fact that it sits outside of the narratives we fall back on?
Sadly I do not think his protest will have the effect that I imagine he hoped it would. I would really like to be wrong about that. I was talking to a friend of mine about people on social media complaining about him getting too much attention relative to Palestinians, but as he pointed out, it is the first day of this particular news cycle. Will people be talking about this in a week?
I saw some people write about Bushnell’s actions in terms of mental health. I don’t know what his mental health status was at the time. But I think this kind of discourse can imply that mental health is discerned by an X-ray or a scan you do which comes back and just says “yes you have depression” instead of by the fact you exhibit certain, often self described, symptoms. The psychologist David Smail wrote a lot about how a person experiencing distressing circumstances can exhibit symptoms which we understand as mental illness and which are also a rational response to their circumstances. Besides, the question of how much agency a severely distressed person has is not a closed one by any means. I found this piece instructive in thinking some of these issues through.
To put this another way: Do I think it is likely Aaron Bushnell was, say, depressed? Yes. Do I think this means he could not have chosen to set himself on fire as a protest? No. And do I think this means he was not responding rationally to the genocide currently ongoing? No.
There is an incoherent line of thinking which will take two identical actions or behaviours and deem one appropriate, even heroic, because it is legislated by, or committed on behalf of, a body which is sanctioned by the Western world as a state. Its twin action, against the aims of the/a state, will, on the other hand, be monstrous, horrific, incomprehensible.
If Aaron Bushnell had died in a planned mission as a soldier, murdering twenty people in the process, this would have been an “honourable” death. How to make sense of this? We come back to marketing again. Or propaganda if you would prefer to call it that.
Every time I go to the cinema now I feel I watch about three different adverts to join various strands of the British army before the film screens. These adverts pitch the experience as a mix between a real life video game adventure experience and a lads holiday. I feel a lot of sympathy for the boys and men who this is primarily aimed at. (I think others have written about this too but I couldn’t find the pieces, apologies if you have done so and I have not referenced you here.) These ads are not for men who will do the officer training program at Sandhurst or whatever it is. They are for men who will leave or have left school with no GCSEs and no good options.
One of my siblings found himself in that situation. I saw how demoralising it was. It is like, as a 16 year old, the whole world is telling you that you are useless and pointless. Going nowhere. He didn’t think about joining the army. But then we don’t come from the sort of background where people join the army or the police. Otherwise I can see how anything or anyone which may be offering you a rare chance to do something that feels exciting or important could be tantalising. Is mental health not a consideration here too? Or is it just a useful one, from the state’s perspective, in this case?
Till next week xxxxxx