Active-duty airman sets himself on fire outside Israel’s D.C. embassy, and the compendium of leftist violence swells

The news that an active-duty Air Force service member had intentionally lit himself on fire outside the Israel’s Embassy in Washington D.C. in an act of protest has dominated the headlines, and rightfully so—it was a horrifying scene, because self-immolation always is. (There are a lot of ways to die, but there’s something about burning alive that is so grotesque and unsettling.)

Identified as 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, the now-deceased protester announced that he would no longer be “complicit” in genocide (I’d wager though that he’s pro-abortion), referenced “colonizers” of the West, and as he burned he reportedly shouted one of the American left’s scripted mantras: “Free Palestine!” The Washington Post reported this:

Lupe Barboza, 32, said she met Bushnell in San Antonio in 2022 at an event for a socialist organization. She said they bonded over their politics…

‘He was outraged, and he knew that no one who is in charge is listening to the protesters out there every week,’ Barboza said. ‘He knows that he has privilege as a White man and a member of the military.’

Clearly this man was no conservative, but that didn’t stop leftist outlets from trying to push the narrative that his beliefs were shaped by Christian “cult” involvement; from The Telegraph:

Since Bushnell’s death, it has emerged that he grew up in a religious compound in Orleans, Massachusetts, where his parents, Dave and Danielle Bushnell, are long-time members of the Community for [sic] Jesus church.

The journalists of the aforementioned WaPo article played a similar angle; but, as Daniel Greenfield of FrontPage writes, “The reality is COJ was a leftist cult that appealed to high-flying liberals.” (The sect was started by “two overweight boozing housewives” engaged in a lesbian affair, which is not even close to the Christian ethic.)

One can obviously infer that Bushnell was driven to this act of atrocity by his political leanings, which if we’re being honest, probably didn’t develop naturally; it seems as though this is the expected result when a misfit seeks meaning… and finds leftism. Here’s how Greenfield articulates it:

Who’s the sort of person who would commit suicide in a graphic public way for his politics? Aaron Bushnell was a former leftist cult member who hooked up with anarchist and socialist groups in search of an identity and then killed himself for their approval.

In politically charged environments, what do societal misfits historically do? Well, they band together and wreak havoc and violence: Hitler’s Brownshirts, Mao’s Red Guards, the Weathermen, Antifa, Jane’s Revenge, etc.

And, if these radicals embracing the left’s slogans are willing to light themselves on fire for the cause, what would they do to me, and the people I love, if given the opportunity? (The answer to that question can be found in any objective history book on leftist regimes.)

But, for a more (and very) recent list of examples, J. J. Sefton at Ace of Spades organized a compendium of leftist violence, summing it up below:

Good morning, kids. You can measure desperation with leftists in a couple of ways. First, there’s violence. Even with a media that acts as both shield and cudgel in terms of advancing a preferred narrative while bashing any strong voices that run contra to same, there’s nothing like a Molotov cocktail, riot or even an assassination attempt or two to get the point across. And that seems to be where we are.

Sefton cites the white powdery substance mailed to Don Jr. with a death threat; he reports on the news of an apparent assassination plot of Tucker Carlson, with the suspect in custody allegedly being hired by Ukrainian Intelligence; he covers the detonated bomb outside the Alabama Attorney General’s office, shortly after the state ruled that embryos conceived via IVF are in fact human beings; and he doesn’t fail to mention that a number of universities are peddling a book titled How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which sells eco-terrorism as “climate activism” and a justified response to energy policies you don’t like.

As Sefton also notes, buckle up, because more “is coming, if not soon then for sure some time this November.”

Image: YouTube video screengrab.

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