A Brief History of Self-Immolation Protests

the twenty first century. Obviously, we are recording this less than a week after Aaron Bushnell, a twenty five year old serviceman in the United States Air Force, let himself on fire in front of the Israeli Intimacy in Washington, d C. And you know, repeatedly stated free Palestine as he was doing it. He said more than that, obviously, he wrote, you know, I think very clearly about why he did what he was doing. This is something that

you'll have heard a lot of debate about. There's a certain kind of person, particularly in the media, who feels obligated to say this is mental illness and we shouldn't discuss it as anything else. I think that's wrong for the same reasons, by the way that it's wrong to dismiss you any sort of mass shooter or whatever as mentally ill not that either of those are similar in

terms of the actions they're not. But that attempt to dismiss it because it's something it makes you uncomfortable to consider that somebody could do something so incomprehensible to you for a logical reason. Now, when I say a logical reason, that doesn't mean I'm arguing this is something more people should do. It doesn't mean that I'm arguing that this was the best thing that Bushnell could do. What I am saying is that, from everything that is available, this

was a rational act. He understood what he hoped to accomplish with this, and he took concerted steps to ensure that he succeeded and that attention was drawn to it. His reason for doing it was clear. He took actions like to set up a will and whatnot. This seems to have been a rational and principled action, and we are I'm not really primarily going to be discussing what Bushnell did because I don't really know that there's much to say. You know, it's it's everyone here's stance that

what's being done to Gaza is a genocide. I don't know that this will help. I certainly hope that somehow it does, but we're simply not at a point where we can say what the impact of this on the overall you know, situation in Gaza is going to be.

That's what we're going to try to cover today. Obviously, this should not be seen as a totally comprehensive look at the entire history.

active protest. In Russia, I think in like the sixteen hundreds, Orthodox I don't know there was an Orthodox sect. I don't really know much about them, but they they locked themselves pro in churches as a protest for some of the czar's reforms and then lit those churches on fire, so like died inside the churches that they were in. So this is a kind of thing that goes back quite a while. I'm sure there are other cases in you know, ancient history that go well before that, but

it's it's not a new thing. However, when we talk about kind of twentieth and twenty first century self immolation, the first sort of really famous case of this and the one that gets brought up every single time people talk about self immolation as a protest tactic was one that occurred during the Vietnam War, and it was the self immolation of a Buddhist monk named tish Quang Duk. I believe that's Thhi. I think that's how that's pronounced.

I lestn't do it before we started recording this, but that kind of stuff slips out of my head, so I apologize if that is the case. He's an interesting guy. I think pretty his early life is probably pretty common for people who become Buddhists, who became Buddhist monks and kind of Central Vietnam in this period of time. He left home when he was like seven, he became a novice at fifteen. By twenty he was a full monk.

And one of the things that's happening during this period of time is the South Vietnamese government is this guy he's called a president. The president he is a dictator. I think everything but name No Din DM and he's a terrible guy. He's a French educated Catholic. And if you know anything about the French history and into China right like that, that does not suggest somebody whose role before Vietnam got its independence from France was particularly great.

His brother No Din knew what is the head of the secret police, And they are despite the fact that Vietnam South Vietnam is a Buddhist majority country, they're passing a lot of policies that are like actively cracking down on and reducing the right of a Buddhist people to worship right. And you know, this is there's a lot of reasons for this, but they kind of boiled down to the fact that Dim was was horrible, was just

a fucking dog shit. Yeah, really really trash. Now I've heard it said online when people bring up this self immolation, you know, within kind of the context of of what's happened recently, like this wasn't a you know, people are wrong when they say this was an act of protest

the Vietnam War. It wasn't. And that is technically true because like the thing that that duke was was protesting was not US involvement in Vietnam, but he was protesting the US backed government of South Vietnam, and that government is very relevant to why there was a Vietnam War. So I do kind of think it's it's not entirely accurate to be like, well, this wasn't a Vietnam War protest, No, no, it was.

having a self immolation protest, right Like. It was the kind of thing where there was a decent amount of like discussion earlier, and Duck is actually the one who I think suggested it initially to like other leaders in the church. And yeah, while there was like for a while they tried to push back against this, eventually the level of prosecution just became so clear that you know, they basically said, Okay, let's like you can do this.

And Duck is going to be the guy who is going to like physically, you know, destroy his body in order to carry out this active protest, as is always going to be the case when we talk about these famous self immolation cases, half of the story is the guy who does or the individual who lights himself on fire, and half of the story is the reporter who happens to be there. And in this case it was a guy named Malcolm Brown. He is, I believe he's an

American reporter. He's stationed in you know, Saigone, and he's you know, doing what a lot of journalists were doing at the time. And in the springtime of nineteen sixty three, there start being like these kind of messages put out by the Buddhist Church that are sort of he describes it as hinting as some kind of spectacular protest. His guess was that it would quote most likely be a disembowlment of one of the monks or an immolation, and either way, it was something we had to pay attention to.

And like a lot of journalists, he's got some sources within the church. He gets a call one day and they're like, you should show up at this pagoda at this specific time. And here is how Malcolm describes what he saw. By the time I got to the pagoda where all this was being organized, it was already under way. The monks and nuns were chanting a type of chant

that's very common at funerals and so forth. At a signal from the leader, they all started out into the street and headed toward the central part of Saigon on foot. When we reached there, the monks quickly formed a circle around a precise intersection of two main streets in Saigon. A car drove up, two young monks got out of it. An older monk, leaning a bit on one of the younger ones also got out. He headed right for the center of the intersection. The two young monks brought up

a plastic jerry can, which proved to be gasoline. As soon as he seated himself, they poured the liquid all over him. He got out a matchbook, lighted it and dropped it in his lap and was immediately engulfed in flames. And yeah, that's you know what happened that day. Malcolm takes a picture of He takes a bunch of pictures.

You can see all of them. There's a Good Time article Malcolm Brown, the Story behind the Burning Monk, that has all of the pictures that he took, or at least like a long list of them, and they are worth seeing. They aren't. I shouldn't have to put a trigger warning in here, right, these are photos of a burning to death.

and it is. It is number one. It does have a role in the anti war movement because you know, this is related to a protest against the government we were backing. But this is also one of the more successful, maybe the most like directly successful cases of self immolation I've seen, because this does play a significant role in the end of Deem's presidency and his life.

security advisor, who the fuck are these people? Like? How did we not know this was going to happen? He's he's very angry about all this. Buddhist is like, I feel like, like that's the kind of big clue I actually have trouble imagining like JFK, having a significant amount of context, aest to like what buddhismiss.

of what happened after Douk's self immolation quote. The publicity of the incident increased pressure on DIM's government to deal with the crisis, but he did not take the incident seriously enough. His response to the death was an announcement on the radio later that day that wildly missed the point. The state of affairs was moving forward so smoothly, he said, bizarrely, when this morning acting under extremist and truth concealing propaganda,

that's so doubt about the goodwill of the government. A number of people got intoxicated and caused an undeserved death that made me very sorry.

It's his brother's wife, but she's basically the first lady right of South Vietnam. She's like, let them burn, We'll clap our hands. Oh god, So it's pretty it's pretty cool. Like DM is actually kind of the smart one in the family because he's trying to like tell his sister in law and his brother in law like nah, bra Or, and his brother and his sister in law, like, you guys don't understand. We have to be a little bit careful here. This could really go badly.

of the police arrest a bunch of people. This continues to draw outrage and make the system a situation worse new the secret police guy has his goons like ransack and destroy a bunch of like Buddhist basically a lot of people, like fourteen hundred people are like rounded up and arrested. DM accuses the monks of being part of the Viet Cong, which is again like sure, such a yeah, okay.

They don't even have passports, right, Like he's he's like weirdly anti the like. And part of it is because the US is about to act here finally to take support away from his regime. So three days after his buddy, his brother in law or his brother Knu has a bunch of raids on these Buddhist temples, there's a cable sent from DC to the US ambassador in Southern Vietnam

that's like, we're not backing this guy anymore. And this ends with a bunch of South Vietnamese generals who had already been planning a coup being given the go ahead from the US basically saying like, we're not our guys are not going to take any actions to stop you from overthrowing this guy. And on November two, Dim and his brother are kidnapped while trying to escape and they are killed not long after. So this is, you know,

pretty successful self emolation. You have to say, right, yeah, yeah, works seems like it works about as well as you could have hoped for that, right, like the at least, I'm sure aus as well as that monk hoped, because you know, Dim is not just out of power, but is fucking killed as a result of this.

is Jian Yong Rong. He is he's also noticed the thing most people call him is Nylon Jung, for reasons that I guess will become clear when he lights himself on fire. So Nylon Jung is a very very influential Uh well, okay, I don't know, very very influential Quatro. But he's like a he's a pretty famous and very influential pro in dependence activist in Taiwan, dring the KMT's occupation there. And this is something I don't like. Americans tend to not understand this very well. So okay, So

the the KMT is the Chinese nationalist party. They take power in Taiwan after just invading it effectively. They when when when they when they lose the civil war, the KMTS are cremating forces, and a bunch of their supporters like flee to Taiwan, and there are there are like three groups of people who the KMT like spend most of their time killing, and that is communist, feminists and Taiwanese independence activists. They also hate Presbyterians for reasons that are.

in nineteen forty seven. Actually we're we are two days. I think when this goes out will be two days after the seventy seventh anniversary of it, where there's there's a giant uprising in Taiwan because like people in Taiwan fucking hate the KMT because they suck and they murder people, and there's this giant uprising and the KMT eventually like their military forces get reorganized and they so the initial uprising takes most of the islands, and then the KMG

just come back and kill everyone. They kill about twenty thousand people in a week. It's one of the sort of like I don't know, one of the kind of like defining incidents and what becomes sort of Talentese national culture. It's just this like massacre and then you know, it's basically it's legal to talk about afterwards. This is this is the beginning of the sort of white terror in China, and they're gonna you know, and this is the start of the KMT kidnapping and torturing like tens of thousands

of people. One of the things that happens in this this is actually so this is this was my family's experience of it. Is that. Okay, so there's there's this up there's the uprising, right, but one of the things that starts happening pretty quickly is these like retaliatory killings against like against Chinese nationals, And that was stuff my family was like, yeah, we like couldn't go outside because if you leave your house, like you're gonna get killed

by mobs and that stuff. That stuff like sucked.

riots and that stuff. You know. So Jong is from a Chinese like like just from like a sort of like Chinese national family that like fled to Taiwan after the war, and his family is protected by other Taiwanese like like uprising people who are like no, like we're not going to fucking just kill these random Chinese people,

Like what are you guys talking about? And that's this really formative thing for him where this is one of the things that caused him to grow up to become like the kind of Chinese like Taiwanese independence activist that he is, where he's one of these people who is really big on Taiwan as like like liberating Taiwan as a nation, but having it be like a nation of ideals and not a nation of blood because his you know, because he sees how badly this kind of like ulternational

bloodline like shit can go. And so he becomes like a pretty prominent independence activist. He runs one of the anti party newspapers, like anti Canteen newspapers, and he's mostly doing a lot of this stuff in the eighties where so basically like you have two consecutive like like the Shanki check and then you have like more guys from

that family. By the eighties, you're like democratization is kind of like slowly moving forward because the time when he's ruling class, he's losing American backing, they're losing backing overseas.

But you know, even even by sort of nineteen eighty nine, which is in the period in which people are talking about like well democratization's happening, like it's gonna go forward, the country still has likes they haven't had like real national elections, and they still have these really really intense what are called anti sedition laws and so one of the things that the pro independence activist and this is the period in which like Taiwan's like modern ruling party,

the Democratic Progressive Party like comes into existence or like they're coming to existence as the anti KMT party. And this is the sort of milieu kind of in which Dylon Jung is sort of mobilizing, right, But he's also I don't know, he's like he's the kind of guy that doesn't exist anymore, which is like he's kind of

like a like like liberal progressive national liberation supporter. So I actually I found a really interesting thing translated by jenhan Chan on this guy I kind of am aware of from Twitter, who translated this thing that he read

about Palestine, where he is a pro Palestine guy. But it's interesting because he sees Palestine as like another nation that's been like subjugated in like a similar way to Taiwan has and you know, and he's like an anti armed struggle guy, but he's also very sort of he's very committed to Taiwanese independence as a national liberation movement and specifically, like the thing that you're liberating it from is the KMT, and so, you know, he he gets

in the trouble constantly with like the KMT government. They arrest in a bunch of times, and eventually, in nineteen eighty nine, he gets charged with these by these anti sisition laws. He gets charged with insurrection for like spreading drafts of a potential new Taiwanese constitution, and so he barricades himself in his office, refuses to show up to code. He gives this giant speech about how like you'll never take me alive, and the police kind of take him serious.

He's barricaded himself in like his newspaper offices, and he's there for like two months, and at the end of month two, a cop who is the current mayor of New Taipei City tries to burst down his door.

They're mayor of PIPEI, which is okay, I'm not going to go into what the difference between Uchaipe and I pay is here. That's that's the whole thing.

have local elections. Now you're we're doing democratization. And suddenly, like their cops break down this guy's door and he lights himself on fire, and you know that the cop later says like, oh, yeah, we break down the door because we were trying to save his life. It's like, no, you didn't. What the fuck are you talking about?

And this that second guy is like a lot less remembered than Nlan Jung but this becomes a massive sort of rallying cry around, like you know, for the pro dependence people, but also for the sort of broader fight

for like an actual like actual free democratic elections. Like the big thing these people were protesting like specifically was free speech because the thing about the sedition laws is if you you know, again, if you start passing around copies of the constitution, they try to arrest you and throw your in prison.

Within about two years, two or three years, all the position laws are appealed, and within well, it takes a while before you get I think I think it's like two thousand I think it's like really when you can what you can call like the first really free like Taiwanese national election, when when there's actually like a transition of power between the KMT and the Democratic Party. Sure, but yeah, it was to a large extent very successful.

I think this was the most clear he won. Melan Jung's like is sort of to this day a pro dependence hero. There's there's a there's a statue of him. Uh so they they I think that I think I'm pretty sure they turned the office re lit himself on fire like into a into a like into a museum, and there's there's a there's a very famous sort of like pictures of these the statue of his burned corpse,

that's just horrowing. It's one of the symbols of the sort of Taiwanese democratic movements, and it's also it's also a sort of it matters a lot. This is also happening in the same year as Tianneman, Like, yeah, so there's that kind of like it's in the air, right yeah. Yeah, and his his widow goes on to be DPP politician and it's one of it's one of the things that it's it's like his memories invoked dream like. So in twenty fourteen, Taiwan had their own version of occupy that's

like shittier called the Sunflower Movement. I'm sorry, this is this is where we're getting into the MIA has a bunch of political beefs with people in Taiwan where I think they're all libs, but it's yeah, like they have their own sort of they have like this this large series of the street protests and this like he's one of the figures that's you know, one of like brought up in as.

self emulations. I guess kind of I don't know, not enough bad things happen to the cops who trigger this kind of stuff, which they also don't although I guess I guess the cops is Sofia nom didn't do great.

the police, but Secret Mia. Did you have another one you wanted to get into before we talk about Tunisia.

the Dalai Lama. So the Dalai Lama, like Flees, there's this whole giant drama nineteen fifty nine. So so okay, I guess, I guess I should go back to the beginning. So Tibet is just like straight up invaded by China. When when the after the Communists win the civil war,

this causes an enormous amount of shit to happen. One of the things that the Communist Party is trying to do is they are trying to gain control of the Tibetan religious system so that they can eliminate the religious system like they can they can eliminate like the Buddhist clergy is effectively, like they can eliminate Buddhist monks. They can eliminate like the religious institutions as a source of

resistance to them. They're kind of foiled in this when the Dalai Lama makes this break and escapes to India. And this is one of the things that triggers eventually in the in the sixties China's war with India. But one of the things that I've been happening for a while was these kind of negotiations between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government to try to like find a kind of resolution to like how bad things were in

Ti Bet. And in two thousand and nine, Di Lama goes, yeah, none of this is fucking working, Like it's not nothing, Like we're not we're not getting anything. The Chinese government is not offering us any like any actual deal that we can live with, and pretty quickly this so, okay, you get this giant wave of self in relations. The first guy, this guy named Tape, he is a monk. He lights himself on fire in two thousand and nine.

There's conflicting reports. Okay. So one of the one of the problems with talking about this is that in this period, the Internet is not as widespread as it is today, and there is a there is a giant like there was a Chinese like media cord and effectively on on Tibet in a very similar way to like West Papua with it like they won't let journalists in. It is

very hard to get information out. So the thing that I'm about to say is something that is reported law on the time by people who try who are trying to smoke all messages out. And the thing they report is that as this guy is self immolating, the Chinese police shoot him like multiple times.

death while they are burning to death. The Chinese police are like as psychotical, maybe not quite as like absolutely murderous as the American police, but they are like they are beating a burning man to death. Right, that is.

has been attempting to suppress to Bet and Buddhism. There's been a massive, way, like systemic, massive ecological instruction of the Tibetan plateau so that the Chinese government can like mine gold and shit and in a way that's very similar to sort of like the ecological demonstation you get in places like the Amazon there are you know, they

are intense police crack downs all the time. There's another very famous incident that's like kind of one of the things that leads to this, where in nineteen eighty nine, there's there's a bunch of protests in Tibet and the

cops just start shooting them. They kill a bunch of people, and so, you know, and people had been like Upu Twi two thousand and nine, people that kind of had this promise that things were going to get better because you know, you have these negotiations between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama, and then the Dollai Lama turns around and goes, yeah, I no, they're not giving us anything.

Like they're giving us nothing. The Chinese states policy on Tibet is that effectively we're going to like we're we're going, we're going, we're going to like we're going to try

to make these people Han effectively. One of the things they spend they do this in Changhan too, is they spend a lot of there's a lot of resources invested in getting like Han settlers from other parts of China to booth to bet, you know, and you know, as as issue also in change on like the like the cadre jobs are basically all like government cadre jobs are basically all Hawn people, and so you know, you start

getting you start getting attempts at sell disobedience. There are these giant protests in two thousand and eight, like attempting to make us sort of like a giant have a giant thing happened right before the Olympics in order to get international support. And those turn into riots and those

are brutally suppressed. And once that happens, people are really kind of they're running out of options for civil disobedience because you know, this is one of these things about this kind of Buddhism is that it's it's very much a like the resistance tradition is nonviolence, right, like these people sometimes like very very rarely you get riots but they're not like they're not going to try or arm struggle, and so what they have is non violence civil disobedience.

But the problem is that if you try to do non violence w disobedience in China, what happens to you is just the cops show up at arrest you all, and then they rest your families. And this is something that happens to the people who self emilate, is that there are like one hundred and sixty of them from two thousand and nine until now. And when someone lights themself on fire, what the Chinese government does is, well, a they beat the person to death while they're on fire.

By they start arresting the people's family, they start arresting their friends, they start arresting people in the monasteries that they're at. They start doing these purges to like stop like to remove the sort of Buddhist monks that they think are going to be problems. And this this fuels this kind of cyclical wave of this because on the one hand, you know, there's this incredible repression going on.

On the other hand, it's not possible to like wage really like wage other kinds of mass so it dis obedience campaigns and The thing about lighting yourself on fire is that the government can't stop it, right, Like in theory you could maybe train police to stop people from blighting people on fire. But the thing is, the actual thing that happens when you light when someone lights themself on fire, is the cop goes and beats them. And so it becomes this sort of it becomes the sort

of like the cycle of self in relations. And also, I mean the other thing that's worth mentioning too is people. There are a few other cases of Tibetan Buddhists, like outside of outside of to bet you do it, there's a few people in India and you let themselves on fire. And I don't know, I think the Tibetan example is

really bleak because it doesn't work. Like they lose. And this is one of these situations where I don't know, like I legitimately don't know how they could have won, because they were dealing with a enormous, a very very powerful state apparatus that was very invested in using all of its state capacity to oppress them, and it it fails, and it it like the thing that it mostly accomplishes is a bunch of is like just a generation of well, I mean some like the youngest kid who self Inlins

is fifteen, right, and it mostly ACCOMPLI whish is a bunch of these kids like themselves on fire and die and everything is worse now than it was in two thousand and nine. Yep, I think, you know. So they're very recently they're been big. They've been protesting to bed again because the CCP is trying to build a damn that's going to flood and destroy a bunch of monasteries. And I don't think anyone's let themselves on fire over it, but the police just arrested everyone, and so I don't know.

It's really bleak, and I think the the Fruz to Bat movement has become much weaker as the sort of like twenty tens went on to the point where now I think like most America, like most of the sort of like broad American far left basically just takes the Chinese line on it, which is that like the Dalai Lama was a slave owner and the Chinese occupation was a gift.

the paradigmatic example of what ceda colonialism is. It's Palestine and Tibet, right, And you know, I like the thing about oh it was because they were trying to like free the Tibetan search really pisses me off because if that was the actual thing the CCP wanted to do, they could have done a thing that happened all over the fucking world in communist countries, which is they could have moved in, they could have knocked off the government, and they could have set up a communist Tibetan state.

for Mongolia. But the thing is if if if your actual objective is just knock off a theocratic government that you don't like, you could have done that, and they don't, they don't.

something they do. But most of the arguments that the that the actual like supporters of the Chinese government in China, the arguments they make is like, oh, well, these people are like, these people are shitty barbarians and we have to like we have to civilize them, and like our invasion was a gift to them because we're going to civilize these people. And like it's it's literally it's like identical to the shit that like that the Israeli say

about Palastinians. We should also very briefly mention that a lot of the surveillance technology that's used in Tibet, like our cameras, that the Chinese government sells to Palestine. So keep that shit in mind. Yeah, And I don't know,

but it's it's this. This is one of the really bleak examples because the thing about self immolation as of politics is that, like it functions by mobilizing someone else, right, and in some cases that's that's you know, that's another government, in some cases that's your own government, in some cases

that's the people around you. But if you're in a state where the government does not give a shit about you, and they have the ability to ruthlessly repress anyone who's inspe fired by your actions, it just it leads to

a lot of people dying. And I don't know what this sort of lesson from that is other than it's really hard for and this is this was the thing with Hong Kong too, is it's it's really hard for any one, any one part of China to try to go into revolt against the government because there's so much more of the rest of fucking China and if if you, if you, if you alone are pitted against the entire miny of Chinese state that has broad popular backing your fucked yeah, and it's it's really bleak.