Young People In The Empire: This Is Their Vietnam

Still from the livestreamed footage of police pointing a gun at a burning man shouting "Get down on the ground!" repeatedly as others scrambled for a fire extinguisher. Australian blogger Caitlin Johnstone described this as, "the most American thing ever."

It has been said -- but I can't recall now who said it -- that Israel's genocide in Gaza is to young people of today what the U.S. war in Vietnam was to my generation.

I think the volume and intensity of protests calling for an immediate ceasefire and to free Palestine gave rise to this interpretation.

Those of us protesting the many, many, many imperial wars since Vietnam may be forgiven for wondering: why this one? Why not the war in Afghanistan, or either of the wars in Iraq (ongoing), Syria, Sudan, Libya, even Korea -- the war that never officially ended?

Young people alive today did not see the carnage of these wars on their television screens the way I once did.

They do see the carnage of Israel's attempt to eradicate Palestinians to finish stealing their land. Despite Israel cutting Gaza off from communications, electricity, food, or even potable water, they see it. Campaigns raise funds to donate esim cards so Gazans can film what is happening to their loved ones. Despite Israel killing a record number of journalists since October 7, the raw videos and testimonies make it onto social media. Youthful reporters Motaz, now in exile, and Bisan are folk heroes for bringing the gruesome facts to our eyes.

Online personalities like Russell Brand and Lee Camp built a following for their comedy but now college students rely on them for current events reporting and analysis.

Even if the evening news were to show a young girl in Gaza vomiting animal feed -- all that's left to eat after weeks of siege -- and then dying, young people would not be watching.

Young people have given up on corporate "news" and have other ways of finding out that a U.S. airman set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC.  Young people will learn of Aaron Bushnell's extreme protest crying "Free Palestine!" over and over as he burned and toppled.

But it probably won't be from the sources where I learned of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức who burned himself to death protesting in Saigon in 1963.

Or the other self-immolations here in the U.S. that I and others saw reported in the news: 

In March 1965, an 82-year-old woman, Alice Herz, protested the ongoing Vietnam War by setting herself on fire on a Detroit, Michigan, street corner. Norman Morrison, 31, ignited himself eight months later outside the Pentagon, beneath the office window of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The following week, Roger Allen LaPorte, 22, did the same in front of New York City's United Nations building.

Our imperial managers have decided that such knowledge among the general populace could endanger their hold on power.

They're right about that. Bushnell was intelligent enough to livestream his self-immolation, making it hard to ignore. (For example, what do you know about the person who set themselves on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Atlanta last December? Exactly.)

Spread the word.

Earlier in the day, Bushnell posted a final message on Facebook, alongside a link to a Twitch stream that has since been taken down.

He wrote: "Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."

Rest in power, Aaron.