He positioned himself under the office window of the secretary of state, climbing to the top of the retaining wall. It is still unknown why he had brought his infant daughter with him, but before dousing himself in kerosene, he had placed her a safe distance away.
By the time onlookers and passersby registered what was happening, Norman Morrison was wrapped in fire twelve feet high. It was November 2nd, 1965, and the Baltimore resident and devout Quaker had made his way to the Pentagon to protest the escalating US war in Vietnam in a chilling, devastating manner. Later, investigators at his home would find a leaflet for a meeting titled “How Can We Prevent World War III.” According to his wife Anne, Norman had become increasingly distraught about what the American government was up to in Vietnam.
Six months prior, at the urging of Secretary of State Robert McNamara, President Lyndon Johnson had authorized the use of napalm in the region. Armed forces contracted with Dow Chemical to manufacture it. The effects of napalm were already well-known by then. Jellied gasoline mixtures had already been used by Allied and Axis forces during World War II.
Adhering to any surface, napalm can burn at temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Even slight contact with the substance can cause second-degree burns. Sticking directly to human skin, as it is designed to do, it effectively incinerates the victim’s flesh, all the way down to the bone if given the chance. Not unlike what happens when someone soaks themselves in fuel and lights a match.
Norman Morrison wasn’t the first to light himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War. Fellow Quaker Alice Herz had self-immolated in Detroit in March of 1965. Both Morrison and Herz were in part taking a cue from Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức, who had lit himself on fire in 1963, protesting the American puppet government of Ngô Đình Diệm. Morrison was the first to set himself aflame in the hub of the American war machine.
Aaron Bushnell wasn’t a Quaker. He was an airman in the US Air Force. A military spokesperson has confirmed it, though they haven’t commented on his motivations for setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy on Sunday. Neither have any of the major newspapers, at least not directly. Discourse Blog’s Jack Mirkinson points out that none of the headlines covering Bushnell’s death mention Gaza. The story of his self-immolation and death floats amidst so many others. The connection between what the 25-year-old airman called “an extreme act of protest” and the reality for around 2 million Palestinians is obscured. Just another senseless act in a world that lost its sense a long time ago.
For an increasingly disillusioned and horrified public, napalm practically became a stand-in for the American war in Vietnam, an avatar for the utterly inhuman and literal immolation of human life. Morrison’s actions helped dramatize this, a process that snowballed over time. Pictures of napalm victims comingled with those of flag-draped coffins. It took several years, but enough American GI’s came home with their own horror stories — their own refusal to be part of a genocide — for the empire to finally cut its losses and pull out. For a time, the flames died in that part of the world.
It is difficult to picture events playing out in such a way today. Not because mass revulsion to this atrocity doesn’t exist, but because the glut of disposable content is too overwhelming, the lines between righteousness and sadism too blurred. The tweet that smugly sneered “our enemies kill themselves” wasn’t in fact from Mossad, but like all shitposts, it expresses what some desire but can’t express with a straight face. Some, of course, are expressing their most sadistic impulses, and indeed are publicly reveling in them. The words of official spokespeople – of the IDF, the Israeli state, the Biden administration – serve as superego giving carte blanche to the id. The dancing in empty schools, the children’s books celebrating the bombardment of ancient cities; these are allowed persist because they aren’t sanctioned, coming as they are from “the world’s most moral army.”
Words may be disconnected from reality, but they can still sub in for it. Everything else, including cities burning – actually burning – becomes mere abstraction. Not even worthy of explaining away. Barely intelligible.
When Norman Morrison lit himself on fire, onlookers could hear him speaking, but could not make out what he was saying. Whether it was a final plea to withdraw from Indochina or how to reach his soon-to-be widow is something we will never know. Aaron Bushnell left no ambivalence: “Free Palestine.” If there is any hope to be had in this desperate act, it is that, underneath all the meaninglessness, something remains eminently real and immediately human.