Well, there have in fact been AFAICT dozens of hunger strikes by various activist groups launched in protest of the Gaza war since last November. Had you heard of any of them?
I certainly don’t want to encourage people to kill themselves, much less anybody else, to make a political point. But if we don’t want that, then I think it’s incumbent on us as a society to pay more attention to less extreme forms of protest.
In particular, I think it’s a bit of a dirty trick (unintentional, I know) for the world to demand that oppressed groups such as the Palestinians need to confine themselves to nonviolent protest for their rights, eschewing terror attacks and other forms of violence, and then turn around and say with LSLGuy that all such protest is “useless”. If we won’t take nonviolent protest seriously, that’s kind of inviting an escalation to violence.
I’ll make a slight amendment / clarification to what I meant, which may not be what I said.
IMO … non-violent protest can be effective. But it must be both massive and sustained. Fill the streets of the capital city for days and weeks.
But what is not effective is one person committing suicide such as this instant case. Nor a few wackos in a few city parks for a few days (Occupy Wall Street). The world is awash in news, and although these pinprick events were newsworthy in the sense that articles were written and pix were posted, they weren’t news-moving in the sense of altering the trajectory of the behemoth of the society they took place in.
Again, I think it has to come down to how you define “effective”. Did, say, the Occupy Wall Street movement actually achieve its blue-sky aspirations of reworking the whole structure of capital and labor etc. etc. etc.? Of course not. Does that mean it accomplished nothing “in the sense of altering the trajectory of the behemoth of the society”? Most analysts seem to disagree, AFAICT:
The Balinese have a tradition called Puputan, mass suicide rather than accepting subjugation.
“When the procession was a hundred paces from the Dutch force, they halted and the Raja stepped down from the palanquin and signaled a priest, who plunged his dagger into Raja’s breast. The rest of the procession began killing themselves and others. Women mockingly threw jewelry and gold coins at the troops.”
And it neither delayed nor softened Dutch colonialism one bit.
I watched the unblurred video of Aaron Bushnell, now removed. If someone were outside their fence with a bomb, or Molotov cocktails, or even flinging a bag of dogshit, I’d have expected the security service inside on ready alert. But this was something they preferred to follow established protocol. It was outside the embassy gate and not their jurisdiction.
Then there were the Jewish rebels on the Masada mountain fortress who commited suicide rather than capitulate to the Romans who were about to capture the place after a long and arduous siege.
Though that wasn’t exactly a protest, I guess, and didn’t have any effect on Roman colonisation.
Off topic: Masada is a spectacular place, well worth a visit! But we’re getting a bit far from the OP…
“We are the spark that’ll light the fire that’ll burn the First Order down.” - Poe Dameron
I don’t believe self-immolation is an effective means of protest. At least not in the sense that it will lead, by itself, to change. But maybe it can bring more attention to a cause and inspire others to take action?
Yeah, I took a look, too. He certainly did have a good bonfire going once he got the lighter to work. Yelling and screaming with those sorts of flames probably cooked his lungs and that might be what killed him in the end, even more than the horrific burns he must have had.
A sad end. I wish he could have found another way to protest, perhaps even a more effective method that allowed him to live.
Self-immolation certainly gets attention, and it leaves the sincerity of one’s beliefs beyond doubt. I’m not sure how much more any individual act of protest can accomplish.
A LOT of Americans believe, with some justification, that a lot of US Mideast policy is driven by Israel’s interests to the detriment of the US’s interests.
I had immediately jumped to the same thought, and quickly followed it with a wonder about specifics of the cultures and society, the context.
Within the Arab Spring context it was the spar… the seed … unleashing expressions of existing wide discontent.
In Western culture it’s more an expression of mental instability. We understand hunger strikes better and those are usually of little impact on general support for a cause.
It is generally agreed that the hunger strikes of the British suffragette movement were critical to the change in voting laws. I believe they were slightly less effective, but still part of the arsenal that brought change, in the U.S.
.
I don’t think it’s really intended to; the chief point is, as you noted, to call attention to your cause and galvanize fellow supporters to further action.
And kill yourself. If you want to go out, and have strong feelings about a topic, taking yourself out in a way that gains attention is tried and true. Its part of the motivation behind mass killings.
(Personally, fire seems painful, but its effecting at gaining attention and doesn’t tend to hurt anyone else).