It Could Happen Here - A Brief History of Self-Immolation Protests

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Robert and Mia start with an overview of self immolation protests in Vietnam and Taiwan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here. And the it is different most episodes. But today, the thing that is happening here is discussion about the growth of self-immolation as a form of protest uh from the 20th to the 21st century obviously we are recording this less than a week after aaron bushnell a 25 year old uh serviceman in the united states air force lit himself on fire in front of the israeli embassy in washington dc and you know repeatedly uh stated free palestine as he was doing it he said more than that obviously he wrote you know um i think very clearly about why he did what he was doing this is something that you'll have heard a lot of debate about there's a certain kind of person particularly in the media who feels obligated to say this is mental illness and we shouldn't

discuss it as anything else uh i think that's wrong for the same reasons by the way that it's wrong to to dismiss you know any sort of mass shooter or whatever as mentally ill um not that either of those are similar in terms of the actions they're not yeah but that attempt to dismiss it because it's something it makes you uncomfortable to consider that somebody could do something so incomprehensible to you for a logical reason now when i say a logical reason that doesn't mean i'm arguing this is something more people should do it doesn't mean that i'm arguing that this was the best thing that bushnell could do what i am saying is that from everything that is available this was a rational act he understood what he hoped to accomplish with this and he took

concerted steps to ensure that he succeeded and that attention was drawn to it. His reason for doing it was clear. He took actions like to set up a will and whatnot. This seems to have been a rational and principled action. And we are not really primarily going to be discussing what Bushnell did, because I don't really know that there's much to say. It's everyone here's stance that what's being done to Gaza is a genocide. I don't know that this will help. I certainly hope that somehow it does, but we're simply not at a point where we can say what the impact of this on the overall, you know, situation in Gaza is going to be. you know situation in gas is going to be yeah and i mean i guess like the the thing we can say off the bat is like whether or not this matters is to a large extent up to you because like someone

someone like i mean this is the thing right like it matters in the sense that it has an impact on the obviously i think it matters because he was a person right well that too right yeah but like yeah in the in the in the sense of whether it accomplishes political objectives, that's up to us figuring out how we're going to run a political movement in such a way that the genocide gets stopped. Yeah, and that is not something I have a clear answer for you on right now. No, me neither. can be helpful in this is attempt to provide some context on what is the history of self-immolation as a protest tactic? How does it tend to work in the past and in the present? And in what sort of situations has it been more or less effective as an instrument of protest? That's what we're going to try to cover today. Obviously, this should not be seen as a totally comprehensive look at the

entire history of this because as I'm about to come – this is what we can get for you in about a week. I think it will help and provide a broader sense of context as to how this sort of thing has worked in other situations around the world and throughout time. Self-immolation goes back very far as a protest tactic. as a protest tactic. There were Christians who were being persecuted by the Roman government in Nicodemia in 300 AD, who lit a fire in front of the emperor's palace and threw themselves into a bonfire as an act of protest. In Russia, I think in like the 1600s, Orthodox, I don't, there was an Orthodox sect, I don't really know much about them, but they locked themselves in churches as a protest for some of the czar's reforms and then lit those churches on fire. So like died inside the churches that they were in. So this is a kind of thing that goes back quite a while. I'm sure there are other

cases in ancient history that go well before that, but it's not a new thing. However, when we talk about kind of 20th and 21st century self-immolation, the first sort of really famous case of this, and the one that like gets brought up every single time people talk about self-immolation as a protest tactic, was one that occurred during the Vietnam War. And it was the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc. I believe that's T-H-I-C-H. I think that's how that's pronounced. I wasn't doing it before we started recording this, but that kind of stuff slips out of my head, so I apologize if that is the case.

He's an interesting guy. I think his early life is probably pretty common for people who became Buddhist monks in kind of central Vietnam in this period of time. He left home when he was like seven. He became a novice at 15. By 20, he was a full monk. And one of the things that's happening during this period of time is the South Vietnamese government is this guy, he's called the president. He is a dictator, I think, in everything but name, Ngo Dinh Diem. And he's a terrible guy. He's a French-educated Catholic. And if you know anything about the French history and into China, right? Like, that does not suggest somebody whose role before Vietnam got its independence from France was particularly great. His brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, is the head of the secret police. And they are, despite the fact that Vietnam, South Vietnam, is a Buddhist majority country, they're passing a lot of policies that are like actively cracking down on and reducing the right of Buddhist people to worship, right? And, you know, this is, there's

a lot of reasons for this, but they kind of boil down to the fact that diem was was horrible was just a fucking dog shit absolutely sucks yeah really really trash now i've heard it said online when people bring up this self-immolation you know within kind of the context of what's happened recently like this wasn't a you know people are wrong when they say this was an act of protest of the Vietnam War. It wasn't. And that is technically true. Because like, the thing that that Duke was was protesting was not US involvement in Vietnam, but he was protesting the US backed government of South Vietnam. And that government is very relevant to why there was a Vietnam War. So I do kind of think it's it's not entirely accurate to be like, well, this wasn't a Vietnam War protest.

No, no. It was just about the fact that the Catholic theocratic drug dealing fascist government was like murdering Buddhists. Seems like you're splitting a hair there, bro. I feel like the murdering Buddhists thing might have been part of why there were so many people willing to fight the South Vietnamese government. Not a 0% part of that equation, maybe. But yeah, so these guys, these Buddhist, I mean, Buddhist religious leaders in the country get increasingly angry about what's happening. There are debates, I think, for several years kind of within sort of the more highly ranking kind of leaders in the faith as to like, what do we do about this crackdown on our rights? And like, should we they were talking for quite some time about having a self immolation protest,

right? Like it was the kind of thing where there was a decent amount of like discussion earlier. And Duck is actually the one who I I think, suggested it initially to like other leaders in the church. And yeah, while there was like, for a while, they tried to push back against this. Eventually, the level of prosecution just became so clear that, you know, they basically said, okay, let's like, you can do this. And Duck is going to be the guy who is going to like physically, you know, destroy his body in order to carry out this act of protest. As is always going to be the case when we talk about these famous self-immolation cases, half of the story is the guy who does – or the individual who lights themselves on fire,

and half of the story is the reporter who happens to be there. And in this case, it was a guy named Malcolm Brown. He is – I believe he's an American reporter. In this case, it was a guy named Malcolm Brown. He is, I believe, is an American reporter. He's stationed in, you know, Saigon, and he's, you know, doing what a lot of journalists were doing at the time. And in the springtime of 1963, there start being like these kind of messages put out by the Buddhist church that are sort of, he describes it as hinting as some kind of spectacular protest. His guess was that it would, quote, most likely be a disembowelment of one of the monks or an immolation. And either way, it was something we had to pay attention to. And like a lot of journalists, he's got some sources within the church. He gets a call one day and they're like, you should show up at this pagoda at this specific time. And here is how Malcolm describes what he saw. By the time I got to the pagoda

where all this was being organized, it was already underway. The monks and nuns were chanting a type of chant that's very common at funerals and so forth. At a signal from the leader, they all started out into the street and headed toward the central part of Saigon on foot. When we reached there, the monks quickly formed a circle around a precise intersection of two main streets in Saigon. A car drove up. Two young monks got out of it. An older monk, leaning a bit on one of the younger ones, also got out. He headed right for the center of the intersection. The two young monks brought up a plastic jerry can, which proved to be gasoline. As soon as he seated himself, they poured the liquid all over him. He got out a matchbook,

lighted it, and dropped it in his lap and was immediately engulfed in flames. and was immediately engulfed in flames. And yeah, that's, you know, what happened that day. Malcolm takes a picture of, he takes a bunch of pictures. You can see all of them. There's a Good Time article, Malcolm Brown, the story behind the burning monk, that has all of the pictures that he took,

or at least like a long list of them. And they are worth seeing. They are, I shouldn't have to put a trigger warning in here right these are photos of a man burning to death like that shit sucks can say yeah yeah good god it doesn't look good it looks really bad yeah now obviously one of specifically one of the photos you've probably seen it where like half of the monk's face looks okay and the other half is just like wreathed in fire. This goes like the 60s equivalent of viral, right? President Kennedy said of the photograph, no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one. And at the time, it may have been true. And it is number one, it does have a role in the anti-war movement because this is related to a protest against a government we were backing. But this is also one of the more successful,

maybe the most directly successful cases of self-immolation I've seen because this does play a significant role in the end of Diem's presidency and his life, right? So Duck leaves a note like a lot of these people do. And his note, again, is very clear-minded. He ends it by saying, before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Noh Din Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. the homeland eternally yeah when this kind of happens as i i quoted earlier kennedy is like shocked and furious um he yells to his national security advisor uh who the fuck are these people like how did we not know this was going to happen he's he's very angry about all this buddhist is like i feel like like that's the kind of people who end up in charge of the US. I actually have trouble imagining, like, JFK having a significant amount of context as to, like, what Buddhism is.

Oh, God. But. Maybe I'm wrong. So, I want to quote from this really good Medium article, The Suicide That Changed American Policy in Vietnam, by Apoorva Tadepali. And this is for a series they write called Nearpod, which is an interactive classroom tool for students. And I found this a very readable and concise description of kind of what happened after Duc's self-immolation. Quote, the publicity of the incident increased pressure on Diem's government to deal with the crisis, but he did not take the incident seriously

enough. His response to the death was an announcement on the radio later that day that wildly missed the point the state of affairs was moving forward so smoothly he said bizarrely when this morning acting under extremist and truth-concealing propaganda that's so doubt about the goodwill of the government a number of people got intoxicated and caused an undeserved death that made me very sorry okay i see a lot of terrible statements about self-immolation it is this guy we need to do the bastards episode on him because dm is like he's horrible he causes a lot of damage to a lot of people but he's such a fucking scrub right yeah like fucking stalin would never you know like the ogs very sad you think saddam hussein would have gotten caught up in that shit no not not my man listen this is like this is

bushling shit even by like fucking like east asian dictators like can you check like no way oh no kai shek wouldn't have gotten caught up in this shit. Absolutely not. Chi Chi Shek, if someone had tried to do this specifically to Chi Chi Shek, Chi Chi Shek would have shot the guy himself. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, my God. So anyway, this scrub, he makes like a head of the Saigon secret police, is basically is saying like, like literally says, if the Buddhists want to have another barbecue, I'll be glad to supply the gasoline. Jesus Christ.

And his wife, who's like a very Mary Antoinette figure, Madam Nhu, who is, it's his brother's wife, but she's basically the first lady, right, of South Vietnam. She's like, let them burn. We'll clap our hands. Oh, God. but she's basically the first lady, right, of South Vietnam. She's like, let them burn. We'll clap our hands. Oh, God. So it's pretty cool. Like, Diem is actually kind of the smart one in the family because he's trying to, like, tell his sister-in-law and his brother-in-law, like, nah, bro,

or his brother and his sister-in-law, like, you guys don't understand. We have to be a little bit careful here. This could really go badly. It really seems like they haven't figured out the playbook for dealing with this yet no because like the successive governments like everyone has like the same line that they say when it happens and these people it looks like they're really kind of scrambling here they didn't have any they'd never even considered that something like this could happen there would be reactions to their

policies like this there are a bunch of protests by monks and nuns. The police arrest a bunch of people. This continues to draw outrage and make the situation worse. Nhu, the secret police guy, has his goons ransack and destroy a bunch of Buddhist temples, basically. A lot of people, like 1,400 people, are rounded up and arrested. Diem accuses the monks of being part of the Viet Cong, which is, again, like- Sure. Yeah.

Okay. So one of the things that is important to understand here is that this is at a very different stage of the Vietnam War. The U.S. has troops in the country, but not a lot, like very few compared to how many are going to be there. And at this stage, Diem actually isn't happy that we have, even though it's going to become very clear that like the US troops, the only thing allowing this regime to stay propped up, he is like, I don't want them here. They don't even have passports, right? Like he's like weirdly anti the like, and part of it is.S. is about to act here finally to take support away from his regime.

So three days after his buddy – his brother-in-law or his brother Nhu has a bunch of raids on these Buddhist temples, there's a cable sent from D.C. to the U.S. ambassador in southern Vietnam that's like, we're not backing this guy anymore. in southern vietnam that's like we're not backing this guy anymore um and this ends with a bunch of south vietnamese generals who had already been planning a coup being given the go-ahead from the u.s basically saying like we're not our guys are not going to take any actions to stop you from overthrowing this guy and on november 2nd diem and uh his brother are kidnapped while trying to escape uh and they are killed not long after so this is you know pretty successful self-immolation you have to say right yeah yeah works seems like it it works about as well as you could have hoped for that right like the at least i'm sure is as well as that monk hoped because you know dm is not just out of power but is fucking killed as a result of this so although the problem is the subsequent

people the u.s put in charge yeah also suck but that's that's also part of a pattern unfortunately and there's like a weirdly there's like a history of self-immolation leading to regime change we're gonna talk about tunisia at the end of the episode and that does tend to be the story of like yeah we got rid of the dictator and then a guy who sucked just as much came into power. Hey, well, the Taiwan one we're going to talk about in a second actually goes pretty well. Yeah. And before we go into that, because we're going to let you take over from here, Mia, or at least for the next couple of parts of this.

But first, let's let our advertisers take over. But first, let's let our advertisers take over. with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

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So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

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Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. All right, Mia, you are on deck. Yeah, so I think people are kind of broadly aware, kind of, if you know anything about self-immolations,

about the self-immolations in Vietnam and then also the sort of the ones in the u.s like as as anti-vietnam war protests the ones that i don't think most people here know and that i only know about like because like my mom was born in taiwan right is the taiwanese self-immolations yeah so this guy's name is chon young wrong he is he's he's also noticed his the thing most people call him is nylon jung for reasons that i i guess will become clear when he lights himself on fire so nylon jung is a a very very influential uh well okay i don't know if very very influential is squadron but he he's like he's a

pretty famous and very influential pro-independence activist in taiwan during the the kmt's occupation there and this is something i i don't like americans tend to not understand this very well so okay so the the the kmt is the chinese nationalist party they take power in taiwan after just invading it effectively they when they when they when they lose the civil war the kmts are cremating forces and a bunch of their supporters like flee to taiwan and there are there are like three groups of people who the kmt like spend most of their time killing and that is communist feminists and taiwanese independence activists they also hate presbyterians for reasons that are independence activists they also hate presbyterians

for reasons that are hey hey we all hate presbyterians am i right okay look look i am not normally a presbyterian liker the taiwanese presbyterians like legitimately do good work in the sense that they are like one of the groups that's like pretty important in bringing down the kmt one party dictatorship but okay so taiwan has this like really appalling like one party dictatorship nylon jung's actually born i think if i'm remembering this right he's born like during the february 28th incident which is this thing in uh 1947 actually we're we are two days i think when this goes out will be two days after the 77th anniversary of it, where there's a giant uprising in Taiwan because people in Taiwan fucking hate the KMT

because they suck and they murder people. And there's this giant uprising, and the KMT eventually, their military forces get reorganized, and they... So the initial uprising takes most of the islands, and then the KMT just come back and kill everyone. They kill about 20,000 people in a week. It's one of the sort of like, I don't know, one of the kind of like defining incidents in what becomes sort of Taiwanese national culture. It's just this like massacre. china and they're gonna you know this is the start of the kmt kidnapping and torturing like tens of thousands of people one of the things that happens in this this is actually so this is this was my family's experience of it is that okay so there's there's this up there's the uprising right but one

of the things that starts happening pretty quickly is these like retaliatory killings against like against chinese nationals and that was stuff my family was like yeah we like couldn't go outside because if you leave your house like you're gonna get killed by mobs and that was stuff my family was like yeah we like couldn't go outside because if you leave your house like you're gonna get killed by mobs and that stuff that stuff like sucked yeah that that does sound like it sucked no it's not good it's the thing because it's it's weird because it's like that uprising like broadly good but it turns it like parts of it turn into race riots or like it's weird. I don't know. It turns into these anti-Chinese national riots.

And that stuff... So Zhang is from a Chinese... Just from a Chinese national family that fled to Taiwan after the war. And his family is protected by other Taiwanese uprising people. Who like uprising people who are like no like we're not going to fucking just kill these random chinese people like what are you guys talking about and that's this really formative thing for him where this is one of the things that causes him to grow up to become like the kind of chinese like taiwanese independence activist that he is where he's one of these people who is really big on taiwan as like like like liberating taiwan as a nation but having it be like a nation of ideals not a nation of blood because his you know because

he sees how badly this kind of like ultra nationalist bloodline like shit can go and so he becomes like a pretty prominent independence activist. He runs one of the anti-party newspapers, like anti-canty newspapers. And he's mostly doing a lot of this stuff in the 80s where, so basically like you have two consecutive, like there's Chiang Kai-shek and then you have like more guys from that family. By the 80s, democratization is kind of slowly moving forward because the Taiwanese ruling class is losing American backing, they're losing backing overseas. But even by 1989, which is in the period in which people are talking about, well, democratization is happening, it's gonna go forward uh the country still has like it has they haven't had like real national elections and they still have these really really intense what are called anti sedition laws and so one of the things that the the pro-independence activists and this is the period in which like taiwan's like modern ruling party the the the uh democratic progressive party

like comes into existence like they're coming to existence as the anti-KMT party. And this is the sort of milieu kind of in which Lai Longcheng is sort of mobilizing, right? But he's also, I don't know, he's a kind of guy that doesn't exist anymore, which is like, he's kind of like a liberal progressive national liberation supporter. So I found a really interesting thing translated by Yen Hon Chen on this guy I kind of am aware of from Twitter

who translated this thing that he wrote about Palestine where he is a pro-Palestine guy, but it's interesting because he sees Palestine as like another nation that's been like subjugated in like a similar way to taiwan has and you know and he's like an anti-arm struggle guy but he's also very sort of he's very committed to to taiwanese independence as a national liberation movement and specifically like the thing that you're liberating it from is the kmt and so you know he he he gets into trouble constantly with like the kmt government

they arrest him a bunch of times and eventually in 1989 he gets charged with these by these anti-secession laws he gets charged with with insurrection for spreading drafts of a potential new Taiwanese constitution. And so he barricades himself in his office, refuses to show up to court. He gives this giant speech about how you'll never take me alive. And the police

kind of take him seriously. He's barricaded himself in his newspaper offices, and he's there for like two months. And at the end of month two a cop who is the current mayor of new taipei city tries to burst down his door that doesn't seem like a job that you should be able to have no no this is one of these things where it's like okay so like the kmt this is one of these things about sort of tony's politics that's weird is that the kmt is the modern sort of pro-china pro-unification faction right those guys suck like like they're they're not at they're not the same sort of like just death squad party they were in the sort of late in like the 20th century but they're also like yeah no it's literally

their mayor their mayor of new taipei which is okay i'm not going to go into what the difference between new taipei and taipei is here that's that's a whole thing i'm guessing it's like the difference between you know new york and old york right it's it's it's closer to the difference between new york city and new york okay okay but that makes sense yeah that works like this guy this guy who again like was elected like two years ago tries to kick down his door and nylon jung lies himself on fire and this has a enormous impact on the sort of subsequent course of taiwanese politics because this is a this is a like this is a pr disaster for the like for for the ruling for like for for the current government which had been

trying to sort of like do it's like ah we're doing moderate reforms blah blah blah we're doing you have local elections now you're doing democratization suddenly like their cops break down this guy's door and he lights himself on fire and you know that the the cop later says like, oh, yeah, we broke down the door because we were trying to save his life. It's like, no, you didn't. What the fuck are you talking about? I love things that have never happened. That's my favorite kind of thing. Yeah.

And, you know, so this is one of these things that I and this is actually a thing that that's become that's a very, very common thing. A protest like now. So now on jung has he has this massive funeral i mean this is an absolutely enormous funeral march and the police attack it and when the police attack it another pro-independence activist also lights himself on fire like in front of the cops when they refuse to do it and this that that second guy is like a lot less remembered than alan jung but this becomes a massive sort of rallying cry around like you know for the pro-dependence people but also for

the sort of broader fight for like an actual like actual free democratic elections like the big thing these people were protesting like specifically was free speech because the thing about the sedition laws is if you you know again if you start passing around copies of the constitution they try to arrest you and throw you in prison yeah i mean nothing says sedition like the constitution of the country you're in yeah and like you're changing it i guess it's sedition it's like the kmt really suck like cannot emphasize that enough but the the sort of the result of this is that you know okay like so this is one of these actions that's kind of complicated because the the the arc of taiwanese politics was bending towards democratization in some kind of like actual

electoral system and it probably would have happened even without this but this supercharges the whole process. Within about two years, two or three years, all the sedition laws are repealed. And within... Well, it takes a while before you get... I think it's like 2000, I think it's like really when you can...

What you can call like the first really free like Taiwanese national election when there's actually like a transition of power between the KMT and the, the, the, the democratic party. Sure. But yeah, it,

it was to a large extent, very successful. Like I don't know. Okay. So it, it, it accomplished the goal of knocking off the KMT sort of one party state. It knocked off sedition laws,

the, the kind of Taiwanese independence, independence like that's very very sort of national liberation driven is kind of not the same one that exists in taiwan now it's a bit different but on the other hand like yeah they they did it it was it was really it was pretty effective um and yeah i don't know like this is this is i of the ones that i've seen i think this was the most clear he won nolan jung's like is sort of to this day a pro-independence hero um there's there's a a there's a statue of him uh so they they i think i think i'm pretty sure they they turned the office real in himself on

fire like into a into a uh like into a museum and there's uh there's a there's a very famous sort of like pictures of these the statue of his burned corpse that's just harrowing it's one of the symbols of the sort of taiwanese democratic movements um and it's also it's also a sort of it matters a lot this is also happening in the same year as tiananmen like yeah so there's that kind of like it's in the air right yeah yeah and his his widow goes on to be a dpp politician um and it's one it's one of the things that it's it like his memories invoked like so in 2014 taiwan had their own version of occupy that's like shittier called the sunflower movement i'm sorry this is this is where we're getting into the the

mia has a bunch of political beefs with people in taiwan okay where i think they're all libs but it's yeah like they have their own sort of they have they have like this this large series of street protests and this like he's one of the figures that's you know one of like brought up in as yeah that's gonna be the same thing with um you know, one of, like, brought up in as, like, a sort of martyr of the cause and stuff. Yeah, that's going to be the same thing with the guy in Tunisia we're about to talk about, too. Where they become, even to people that they would not, you know, certainly were not, like, expressing similar views, they still become this, like, icon that gets cited. Yeah. Yeah, and I think the last thing, too, is he's, the fact that the cop who kicked his door down

is now the fucking mayor of new Taipei City is just like oh appalling stuff yeah the KMT absolutely suck and those are the people who want Taiwan to be reunified with China so if that

understand who you're making your bed with if that's the kind of politics that you you want to be engaged in yeah so that's that that's that's that's the time we want self-immolations i i guess kind of i don't know not enough bad things happen to the cops who trigger this kind of stuff which they often don't although i guess i guess guess the cops in South Vietnam didn't do great. No, no, no. I mean, ultimately, right? It doesn't immediately really cause them any problems.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Yeah, we just got beaten by phone books because they don't leave any bruises by our sponsors at the secret police. So, you know, the secret police, like the police, but secret. Mia, did you have another one you wanted to get into before we talk about tunisia um do we want to do tibet first or do we want to do tunisia first why don't we why don't we do tibet yeah so i i think other than tunisia i think the most famous wave of self-immolations was the ones in tibet that started in about 2009 there there is actually a guy in tibet who lights

himself on fire in the late 90s but that doesn't have the same kind of sort of it doesn't have the same effect as 2009 ones so one of the things that's been periodically happening i guess over the sort of course of the the history of sort of occupied tibet is the dalai lama so the dalai lama like flees there's this whole giant drama in 1959 so so okay i guess i guess i should go back to the beginning so tibet is just like straight up invaded by china when when the after after the communist when the civil war this causes an enormous amount of shit to happen one of the things that the communist party is trying to do is they are trying to gain control of the tibetan religious system so that they can eliminate the religious system like they can they can eliminate like the the buddhist clergy effectively like they can eliminate buddhist monks they can eliminate

like the religious institutions as a source of resistance to them they are kind of foiled in this when the dalai lama makes this break and escapes to india um and this is one of the things that triggers eventually in in the in the 60s china's war with India. But one of the things that had been happening for a while was these kind of negotiations between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government to try to find a kind of resolution to

how bad things were in Tibet. And in 2009, the Dalai Lama goes, yeah, none of this is fucking working. We're not getting anything. The Chinese government's not offering us any actual deal that we can live with. And pretty quickly, this, so, okay, you get this giant wave of self-immolations. The first guy, this guy named Taipei, he is a monk.

He lights himself on fire in 2009. There's conflicting reports. One of the problems with talking about this is that in this period, the internet is not as widespread as it is today. There was a Chinese media cordon, effectively, on Tibet in a very similar way to like west papua where they like they won't let journalists in it is very hard to get information out so the thing that i'm about to say is something that is reported a lot on the time by people who try who are trying to messages out and the thing they report is that as this guy is self-immolating the chinese police shoot him like multiple times well i mean as we've as we've seen recently that is how cops tend to look

at somebody like yeah someone has lit themselves on fire clearly what this situation needs is a gun and and you know okay so like the chinese police they they're i don't i don't have any evidence of them shooting people after that they absolutely one of the things that so what happens after this is this wave of self-immolations is protest across tibet the thing that they absolutely do a lot is start beating the person who's on fire with a stick like using like riot sticks um sometimes they have these they have riot sticks with like spikes on them and they are absolutely beating people to death while they are burning to death the chinese police are like as psychotic maybe not quite as like absolutely murderous as the american police but police are like as psycho maybe not quite as like absolutely

murderous as the american police but they are like they are beating a burning man to death right that is oh god i i will say that is that is definitely i haven't that's certainly i can't think of anything i've ever seen u.s police do that is more violent than beat a man to death while he's on fire like yeah that's up there that that makes the cut it's really bad um and this is the kind of thing that you know i mean this is this is the kind of thing that that sets off these self-immolations in the first place which is that tibet has you know like is has has a colonial occupation right it has you know the chinese government has been attempting to suppress tibetan buddhism there's been a massive way like systemic massive ecological destruction of the tibetan plateau so that the chinese government can like mine gold and shit

and in a way that's very similar to sort of like the ecological devastation you get in places like the amazon there are you know there are intense police crackdowns all the time there's another very famous incident that's like kind of one of the things that leads to this where in 1989 there's there's a bunch of protests in tibet and the cops just start shooting them they kill a bunch of people and so you know and people had been like up until 2009 people had kind of had this promise that things were going to get better because you know you have these negotiations between the chinese government and the dalai lama and then the dalai lama turns around and goes yeah no they're not giving us anything like they're

giving us nothing the chinese state's policy on tibet is that effectively we're going to like we're going we're going we're going to like we're going to try to make these people han effectively one of the things they spend they do this in xinjiang too is they spend a lot of there's a lot of resources invested in getting like han settlers from other parts of china to booth to bet you know and you know as as it's true also in xinjiang like the like the cadre jobs are basically all like government cadre jobs are basically all uh han people and so you know you start getting you start getting attempts at civil disobedience there are these giant protests in 2008 like attempting to make a sort of like a giant have a giant thing happen right before the olympics in order to get

international support and those turn into riots and those are brutally suppressed and once that happens people are really kind of they're running out of options for civil disobedience because, you know, and this is one of these things about this kind of Buddhism is that it's very much a, like, their they're not going to try your arm struggle. And so what they have is nonviolent civil disobedience. But the problem is that if you try to do nonviolent civil disobedience in China, what happens to you is the cops show up and arrest you all. And then they arrest your families. And this is something that happens to the people who self-immolate is that there are like 160 of them from 2009 until now. is that there are like 160 of them from 2009 until now and when someone lights himself on fire what the chinese government does is well a they beat the person to death uh while they're on fire uh b they they start arresting the people's family they start arresting their friends they start arresting people in the monasteries that they're at um they start doing these purges to like stop

like to to remove the sort of buddhist monks they think are going to be problems and this this fuels this kind of cyclical wave of this because on the one hand you know there's this incredible repression going on on the other hand it's not possible to like wage really like wage other kinds of mass civil disobedience campaigns and the thing about lighting yourself on fire is that the government can't stop it right like in theory you could maybe train police to stop people from lighting people on fire but the thing is the actual thing that happens when you light when someone lights himself on fire is the cop goes and beats them and so it becomes this sort of cycle of self-immolations.

And also, I mean, the other thing that's worth mentioning too is people, there are a few other cases of Tibetan Buddhists outside of Tibet. There's a few people in India who let themselves on fire. And I don't know i i think the tibetan example is really bleak because it doesn't work like they lose um and this is one of these situations where i don't know like i legitimately don't know how they could have won because they were dealing with a enormous a very very powerful state apparatus that was very invested in using all of its state capacity to repress them and it it it fails and it it like the the thing that it mostly accomplishes is a bunch of is like just a generation of well i mean some like the youngest kid who self-immolates

is 15 right and it mostly accomplishes a bunch of these kids light themselves on fire and die and everything is worse now than it was in 2009 yep i think you know so very recently there have been big there have been protests in tibet again because the ccp is trying to build a dam that's going to flood and destroy a bunch of monasteries and i don't think anyone's lit themselves on fire over it but the police just arrested everyone and so i don't know it's really bleak and i i i think the the the free tibet movement has become much weaker as the sort of like 2010s went on to the point where now i think like most america like most like most of the sort of like broad american far left basically just takes the chinese line on it which is that like the dalai lama was a slave owner and the chinese occupation was a gift yeah yeah like i want to take like two like a couple like a minute

to talk about this because i hear that a lot yeah and it's this thing where like you know it's really interesting looking at a lot of these people who are who are anti-tibet but pro-palestine because you know if you look at the originators of setter colonial studies like people like patrick wolf right who was like the godfather of setteronial studies, Tibet is one of the states that he holds up as the paradigmatic example of what settler-colonialism is. It's Palestine and Tibet. of like free the tibetan search really pisses me off because if that was the actual thing the ccp wanted to do they could have done a thing that happened all over the fucking world in communist countries which is they could have moved in they could have knocked off the government and they could have set up a communist tibetan state right this happens all over the fucking eastern block there's precedents for it in east asia which you know there's a precedent of mongolia which was

also i mean a very different buddhist society but also a largely buddhist society where the soviet union went in knocked off the government and set off set up an independent mongolian state right and i'm not going to say things like went great for mongolia but the thing is if if your actual objective is just knock off a theocratic government that you don't like yeah you could have done that and they don't they don't do it they were pretty at the fucking china it's also worth like stating like yeah things maybe not like didn't work out great in the immediate term for mongolia but mongolia as a state right now is not like the worst it's not doing as badly as like tibet is doing you

know like it's it's an independent country that functions more or less yeah and who does better than functioning more or less really yeah like and this i don't know and this is this is the sort of that's and that's one of the things that like chinese nationalists tend not to really use that line i mean they use it a bit when that when they're when they're personally like when they have to like specifically make arguments about the Dalai Lama that's something they do but most of the arguments that the actual like supporters of the Chinese government in China the arguments

they make is like oh well these people are like these people are shitty barbarians and we have to like we have to civilize them and like our invasion was a gift to them because we're going to civilize these people and like it's literally it's like identical to the shit that like the Israelis say about Palestinians.

Uh, we should also very briefly mentioned that a lot of the surveillance technology that's used in Tibet, like our cameras that the Chinese government sells to Palestine. So keep that shit in mind. Yeah. And, and I don't know, but it's, it's, it, this, this is one of the really bleak examples because the thing about self-immolation as a politics is that it functions by mobilizing someone else. And in some cases, that's another government. In some cases, that's your own government. In some cases, that's the people around you. But if you're in a state where the government does not give a shit about you and they have the ability to ruthlessly repress anyone who's inspired by your actions, it just, it leads to a lot of people dying.

what the sort of lesson from that is other than it's really hard for this is the thing with Hong Kong too it's really hard for any one any one part of China to try to go into revolt against the government because there's

so much more of the rest of fucking China and if you if you alone are pitted against the entire might of chinese state that has broad popular backing you're fucked yeah and it's it's really bleak but yeah yeah yeah i don't have anything positive to say there hey everybody robert here uh our discussion ran very long so this is going to be a two-parter. You'll be hearing about Tunisia and more in the next episode. But for now, please continue listening to our podcasts, and not other podcasts, because

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Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

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