Self-immolation: a whole bunch of individuals within the US have set themselves on fire in protest for the reason that Sixties

Images of Maxwell Azarello, engulfed in flames, spread worldwide recently after he set himself on fire outside the Manhattan court where Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial is being held. It got here just months after Aaron Bushnella 25-year-old energetic duty airman, livestreamed his self-immolation on the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, repeatedly yelling “free Palestine”.

Journalists have called these self-immolations “extreme” and “grotesque”and have obsessed over the “haunting” or “chilling” final messages left by those that died. People have also commented on a decline within the mental health of those involved.

But seeing these protests as fierce demonstrations of self-harm undermines the political claims that motivate them. There is, actually, an extended and sometimes forgotten history of protest self-immolations within the US.

My own researchpublished in 2018, reveals that a whole bunch of Americans have demonstrated their political dissent by burning themselves in public. Each had a definite motive, meaning and critique underpinning their final acts.

Understanding American self-immolations requires a patient and difficult reflection on the role emotions and mental health play in political motion.

American self-immolations

Self-immolation became a recognised protest tactic in 1963, after Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burned himself to death in Saigon, South Vietnam. American photojournalist Malcolm Browne captured the spectacle in a widely reproduced photograph.

The protest, which was directed against religious oppression by the South Vietnamese government, also demonstrated Vietnamese opposition to growing US military intervention within the region.

The first American political self-immolation occurred in March 1965. Alice Herz, an 82-year old peace activist and refugee from Nazism, burned herself to death in Detroit to protest the US military’s strategic bombing in Vietnam. A letter sent to her daughter said that she did this “not out of despair, but out of hope for mankind”. Herz wrote: “I actually have chosen the flaming death of the Buddhists.”

Herz’s life and death quickly faded from the headlines as public awareness of the war in Vietnam was limited on the time. Despite Herz’s lifelong commitment to peace and civil rights, people refused to acknowledge the politics behind her suicide and she or he was immediately dismissed as someone demonstrating senility and dementia.

Although mostly forgotten within the US, Herz’s decision to convey solidarity with Vietnamese monks resonated in precisely the way in which she hoped. Crowds of individuals in Hanoi stood for a moment of silent prayer upon hearing news of her death. Poets composed songs and recitations cherishing her lifelong commitment to pacifism, children learned of Herz at school, and a street in Hanoi was renamed after her.

Nine months later, 31-year-old Norman Morrison set fire to himself outside the Pentagon. By now the conflict in Vietnam was widely known, and Morrison’s protest was higher understood by the American public. Journalists drew connections between the situation of his protest and his critique of the US military, and reported his death on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country.

A wave of self-immolations followed. On November 9 1965, 22-year-old Roger LaPorte set fire to himself outside the UN constructing in New York. Two days later, a bereaved mother “despondent over casualty reports from Vietnam” self-immolated in Indiana. By scouring local news reports, I’ve found a whole bunch of cases of individuals burning by self-immolation throughout the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, often as a protest against the continued war in Vietnam.

In fact, such was the fear of self-immolations in protest on the war that police were equipped with special firefighting implements and asbestos gloves to fend off, what they feared, could be marauding masses of aflame anti-war hippies.

The politics of protest suicide

Many acts of self-immolation are provoked or triggered by personal crises. But in such protests, observers often only see the suicide, and seek emotional and mental health reasons to clarify something outlandish, and avoid admitting that political dissent motivated these last acts. This results in some self-immolations being seen as more legitimate than others.

In 1996, an American political activist and artistic performer called Kathy Change self-immolated on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania to protest “the current government and financial system”. The New York Times responded with an article depicting “the manic and messianic lifetime of a troubled idealist”. Change’s death remains to be deemed a less authentic protest than, for instance, the Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouaziziwhose 2011 self-immolation inspired the Arab Spring.

Categorising self-immolation as “only a suicide” can obscure thoughtful politics. Anti-Vietnam war protesters deliberately self-immolated to indicate solidarity with the Vietnamese. And civil rights organiser and former military veteran Willie B. Phillips self-immolated in Atlanta in 1972 to focus on the spectre of violence towards African Americans.

Environmental protesters have also used self-immolation to forcefully portray the results of climate change. In April 2018, David Buckel explained of their last testament that “my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we’re doing to ourselves”.

Then, in 2022, Wynn Alan Bruce, a 50-year-old climate protester from Colorado, self-immolated outside the Supreme Court. A friend tweeted: “This act will not be suicide … this can be a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to the climate crisis.”

If nothing else, self-immolations raise difficult questions. Is suicide the suitable word to use to those instances when many would consider themselves to be martyrs performing a self-sacrifice? Similarly, at what point does the motive for protest suicide move from a legitimate political judgement into the realm of an emotional or mental health crisis?

Ultimately, self-immolation reveals the responsibility everyone has to grasp the politics of protest suicide. More importantly, each of us must detach judgement of mental health from judgement of political protest – even when the protest seems strange.