For a full minute, police (unknown sector, maybe fed or DC) see him, say “May I help you sir?” and as he’s on fire scream at him to get on the ground but do not otherwise engage. One cop appears with a gun drawn on the man after he collapses, still consumed by flames.

An American Tale

Yeah I just watched the video and I just gotta say massive fuck you to all the people who shit on this dude or just write him off as "a troop." He opens up the video and says he's about to engage in "an extreme act of protest" but "compared to what people in Palestine have been experiencing at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all" and then lights himself on fucking fire.

If you watch that and don't have even the slightest bit of empathy or think that he is not in any way a comrade, there is something wrong with you

Yeah he shouldn't have joined the military, yeah he shouldn't have killed himself, but jesus fucking christ people that just makes it more tragic.

Support the troop

all the news articles articles aren't admitting that he was protesting the genocide in gaza.

One I read quickly mentioned him then pivoted to talking about environmentalist protesters who have self immolated in the past for over half the article. Others mention no motive at all and are just a couple sentences. One said "it's unclear if this is related to Israel's military action in Gaza".

Goddamn I hate "journalists". Lying hacks who take clear and easy to understand events and twist them into nothingness

Just heard NPR report this as "His reason for doing so is still unknown." How? He said why he was doing it!

Holy fuck, amerikkkan journalism is pure fucking propaganda, usa today's article says "Local and Federal officials have declined to say whether this was a form of protest"

Someone self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta a few months back too: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/01/protester-palestine-self-immolate-atlanta-israel-consulate

90% of the people in this thread are contrarian who just want to smugly laugh to themselves about how this does nothing or he deserves it for being a troop. Like idk how anyone can see this and not just feel a sense of sadness that not only did someone die in such an excruciating way but for absolutely nothing and that nothing will change or even remember him, especially since seemingly half the people who'll even remember this in a week's time are saying he's destined for hell because he didn't hijack a Boeing or something and do 9/12.

It's obviously sad and very disturbing, and should be the kind of thing that wakes people up. Unfortunately, the US media is very careful on downplaying/misreporting self-immolations, even though in theory it's the type of macabre story that they'd capitalize on.

This won't make any headlines. A monk in Tibet? Plastered everywhere. People throwing paint or soup or whatever on art? Everywhere, drives the chuds rage. But they'll hardly mention this.

Only good AmeriKKKan soldier.

But seriously this is based AF. No matter his faith, may Allah reward his compassion and bravery in the afterlife

Any journalist that does not publish this or completly ignore his reason is lowest propaganda creator alive. I agree that media would have gone mad with this if this was 50 years ago in Vietnam. Media became much more state controlled since. Remembering you is the least I could do noble soldier

He may have been a troop, and a single death is nothing compared to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, and maybe his action didn't achieve anything, but we are still talking about a human life of someone who got where they are partially due to the material reality they grew up in, and of someone who in the end saw the wrongness in it all. I thus am a bit alarmed that some of the comments' first reaction on here is to insult him.

Doing something like that's no small commitment, that's for sure.

Is it just me or has self immolation gotten very frequent in the US? There was that scientist in D.C. protesting climate change, then another person in Atlanta protesting Israel.

Damn shame he chose that path

I salute this man. The Empire will of course play down his courageous act and bury it as soon as possible, but we will remember. He threw his life away to protest for Palestine.

That poor bastard. I don't know if he was a comrade or simply someone who broke when confronted by US actions. But this is the least useful way to Martyr yourself, and Martyrdom is the least useful way of resistance.

Regardless, since he is a martyr, may he rest with those of Haymarket.

self immolation is a shit way to go and while efficacy of action is probably not the priority of someone committing suicide, i'm not aware of individual actions like this ever amounting to much.

Goddamn.

I'm not gonna shit on this guy because I think his heart was very obviously in the right place, but I have to agree with others here in that this is a terrible waste of a life, particularly a life belonging to the one US troop willing to die fighting the Palestinian genocide.

Unfortunately, I doubt he was capable of doing much better because of how massively alienated he must've been. He almost certainly lacked anything resembling a coherent set of politics, and he almost certainly lacked like minded comrades to set him on the right path. Considering he was active duty, I have no doubt he could have found a way to frag some officers, but he probably thought violence would be counter productive. There's a reason why Americans grow up learning about a wildly sanitized version of MLK Jr. and absolutely nothing about the Black Panthers.

So in the end, he spent his last moments screaming in agony for nothing, not understanding that the media was going to effortlessly sweep this under the rug just like it did the last few self immolations. This is so fucking sad, and it's why we need to organize to capture and productively redirect people like this as they radicalize. Rest in peace.

I don’t agree with his choice but

What an incredibly horrible cry of frustration and rage at being part of something monstrous that you know you can't stop.