About Aaron Bushnell

In 1969 a philosophy student named Jan Palach self-immolated in Prague, Czechoslovakia. His protest was proximally a response to the Soviet bloc invasion of 1968 that suppressed the Prague Spring with its calls for liberalization — a less violent and repressive state and more openness to the West. But more generally, he was protesting what he and others viewed as the almost complete demoralization of a Czechoslovak society that just went along with things, including their own violent repression.

Palach’s extreme act was not the first protest by self-immolation to occur in the Eastern bloc, and it was not the last. Knowledge of previous similar acts, however, was successfully suppressed until after the collapse of Communism.

Thanks to the efforts of students and the strength of dissident media at that time in Prague, Palach’s act (and the powerful response to it) could not be hidden from view. Hundreds of thousands turned out for Palach’s funeral and a memorial march. Naturally, Palach was called merely mentally ill by supporters of the regime, just as Aaron Bushnell is today.

Palach became a hero to the dissident movement. Protests in 1989 that preceded the change in regime called the Velvet Revolution were organized in his name, and there is a square today in Prague called Jan Palach Square.

Remember this, and let’s be hopeful.

Footnote:

And vigilant. It’s not a new struggle, and it’s not one that goes away. When I was in Bratislava in 2022, I took a photograph of some graffitti that illustrates this. Ján Hus — Ján Palach — Ján Kuciak.

Ján Hus — Ján Palach — Ján Kuciak.

The last named was an investigative journalist murdered in 2018, along with his girlfriend, on the orders of a prominent businessman whom Kuciak was investigating for corruption. Justice seems remote, and mostly what’s clear about the case is that journalism is an increasingly dangerous business around the world. A documentary about Kuciak: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21093696/