Pathologizing protest is self-soothing for the collective conscience

When we pathologize protesters–dismiss them as mentally unstable–we give ourselves permission to stop thinking about them.

Writing off their demonstrations as crazy is an attempt to detach their actions from their message. Especially when their message reminds us of something we’d rather not think about.

Protests are symptoms of greater societal ills–the really big, sticky systemic problems that seem too complicated to unravel. Pathologizing the protestor allows us to ignore these underlying problems at the heart of their demonstration.

The more clear and uncomfortable the message and the more difficult the protest is to watch, the more we seek to delegitimize it as deranged–the actions of an mentally unstable outsider who has lost touch with reality.

Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation in front of the Israeli Embassy in D.C. this week was gruesome and horrifying. His message was a clear statement about American complicity–and involvement–in the murder of over 30,000 Palestinians since October 7. 

So it’s not surprising that his mental health was immediately and widely questioned. It’s more comfortable to call him crazy than to consider what he consciously did to his own body or contemplate his clearly-stated rationale.

Only after persevering through our initial horror and discomfort are we able to think about Aaron’s actions and message specifically, and the act of self-immolation in general.  

It is possible, and useful, to think about things we don’t fully understand or agree with. (Doing so does not mean that we are condoning them.) But this type of thinking can make us very uncomfortable, especially  if we aren’t accustomed to it. And it’s a type of thinking that our culture does not foster or value.

When most of us think of self-immolation, the famous 1963 black-and-white image of Thích Quảng Đức comes to mind. He is seated in the meditative lotus pose, his robe and body engulfed in flames. Quảng Đức, a 70 year-old Buddhist monk, volunteered to set himself on fire to bring attention to the persecution Buddhists were experiencing in South Vietnam. 

As the news of Quảng Đức’s self-immolation spread, the shocking image of his burning body forced the world to momentarily feel the pain and urgency of the Buddhists’ escalating persecution in South Vietnam. And it was a reminder of that suffering every time the image crossed their minds.

In his final letter, Quảng Đức made his message clear: “I respectfully plead with President Ngô Đình Diệm for compassion towards the people of the nation and for implementing religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland for eternity.” 

But in the wake of Quảng Đức’s self-immolation, the South Vietnamese government claimed that he was on drugs or set himself on fire after being bribed by Malcolm Browne, the American photographer that captured the image. By oversimplifying and misrepresenting Quảng Đức’s self-immolation, President Diệm’s regime hoped to separate his actions from his message, and discredit his claims about their cruelty towards Buddhists.

Aaron Bushnell’s message was also clearly and calmly stated in the moments before he lit his military uniform: 

“My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active-duty member of the United States 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 have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

Through his speech, Aaron contextualizes the destruction of his own body with the 30,000 Palestinian bodies destroyed since October. This message paired with his self-immolation forces us to consider the gruesome physical violence experienced by the more than 100,000 Palestinians killed or wounded these past 6 months. Aaron forced a very painful and intimate moment into the public sphere, and in doing so, reminds us that sudden and violent deaths brought on by different forms of fire–including his own–should not be normalized.

Calling Aaron Bushnell crazy while staying silent about the violent murder of 30,000 civilians–over 12,000 of those children–just emphasizes Aaron’s final message: “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”