sorry to say this but not every act of protest is meant to be palatable. actually scratch that, to protest is to disrupt, it's to inconvenience, it's to make you unable to ignore the protesters message, it's priority should never be its palability.
actually im going to elaborate on this. self-immolation is meant to disturb people. its meant to scandalize and to mark you. it is a radical act of protest at an incredible high cost and it should be treated as such. Aaron Bushnell's death should be mourned because it was preventable. it was as preventable as the 30,000 Palestinian deaths. but his choice should be honored and respected.
in his own words : “my name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the united states air force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
the whole point of his protest is to highlight the violence and pain that the usa and more specifically the usa army is complicit in. in a way that could not be ignored.
to blur his final moments to make them more 'comfortable' to watch, to consume, is extremely disrespectful.
mind you i am not saying that you should go out of your way to expose yourself to such footage, especially if you are not in a place mentally that allows you to do so.
but his final wish was to force us into a conversation around the pain and violence we are complicit with. so much so that it has now become 'normal' rather than outraging.
it is important that we do not let the media sweep up or minimize his actions (something that the blurring facilitates). just in the last not even four months we have had 3 separate self-immolations in protest against at least two ongoing genocides. this is what the fucking wikipedia page for political self-immolation looks like as of today.
here's some links to check out:
https://www.focuscongo.com/en/
https://www.unrwa.org/
