When Did People Start Harming Themselves For Politics?

The recent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which some individuals are willing to go for political aims. While violence against others for political reasons is sadly not new, a disturbing trend seems to be emerging, particularly among younger generations: physically harming yourself in the name of political causes. How in the world did we get here?

Hungry for Protest

2024 alone has already seen several examples of public suicides in the name of politics. One man set himself on fire outside the courthouse where Trump was on trial, drawing media attention and raising questions about the motivations behind such drastic actions. Although he is said to have thrown pamphlets across the courthouse plaza just before dying, it’s not clear exactly how the act tied into specific political aims, and the man died in the hospital of his injuries. Another man, a 25-year-old Air Force veteran, set himself ablaze outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., protesting the Israel-Palestine conflict, live streaming the incident. It’s believed his death might have been a copycat protest of a similar self-immolation the December before at the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. These incidents aren’t just isolated examples of mental illness; they’re a broader pattern of self-harm in the name of political activism.

Other protests have involved non-lethal self-harm, like food and medicine strikes. For example, Princeton students ended an unsuccessful hunger strike as the school year came to a close after being mocked on social media, receiving a similar lack of support to Representative Greg Casar’s 9-hour “thirst strike” last year. "I go on a thirst strike literally every night at bedtime," a BlazeTV host tweeted, "Please clap." While Casar was at least protesting something related to his thirst strike, pushing for workers’ heat safety protections, not every similar protest has quite the same level of coherence. One Broadway star stopped taking his daily dose of Dovato, a medication given to patients with HIV, in dramatic fashion, pressuring his theater workshop to “take a stand” in support of Palestine. He burned his first pill on a homemade funeral pyre, buried the second, and gave the third a drop of his blood, saying, “Each of my pills, though, still wants to be consumed in some way. Be part of a ritual. Be part of a community. Be part of a common humanity.” It’s not clear how he believes the New York Theater Workshop would affect the war in Gaza. 

Divorced from History

While these strikes and protests are meant to look like a continuation of the social justice movements of previous generations, they’re fundamentally different in how they fail to be connected to actual change. The Civil Rights sit-ins of the 1960s, for instance, were effective because they directly challenged the injustices of segregation. Protesters who endured abuse during these sit-ins highlighted the cruelty and idiocy of segregationist policies, garnering public sympathy and support without aggression. The Montgomery bus boycotts were another powerful example, using economic pressure to demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in the transit economy.

Without a clear purpose, these acts of self-harm just turn into ways for young people to invent victimhood in order to feel some of the suffering they feel powerless to fix in the world.

In contrast, many of today's self-harming protests lack a clear connection between the method of protest and the desired outcome. While historical hunger strikes by figures like Nelson Mandela, suffragettes, and Mahatma Gandhi were often used in response to imprisonment or under conditions where other forms of protest were not possible, they also involved significant public awareness and specific policy goals. These protests might have involved allowing themselves to be harmed on the way, but their ultimate goal wasn’t hurting themselves; it was creating direct pressure on those who could actually make the change they were seeking.

Today's protests, however, don’t have the same clarity or direct purpose. For instance, most of the Gaza-related campus protests weren’t clear on what they were even protesting; they were just students wanting their schools to feel as angry as they were. While some protesters had concrete goals, like asking schools to divest their investments away from Israel, in many cases it wasn’t clear this was possible, that it would be effective in changing Israel’s foreign policy, or that the protests would have even stopped if campuses met these fuzzy demands. As a result, they struggle to generate the same level of public support and attention that historical protests managed to achieve. Without a clear purpose, these acts of self-harm just turn into ways for young people to invent victimhood in order to feel some of the suffering they feel powerless to fix in the world. In this way, this self-harm and suicide aren't courageous; it’s just giving in to the powerlessness young people feel overwhelmed by.

The Value of Life

This trend of using your body as fodder for social justice reflects a deeper, more troubling shift in contemporary culture: the declining value of life. People, especially young people, have begun to see their bodies as mere tools for political ends, rather than recognizing them as having any inherent worth. This shift is hardly limited to social justice politics, though. The increase in medical euthanasia and celebration of abortion are evidence that people don’t see the point in human life for its own sake.

Some, including Jordan Peterson, say it’s no coincidence that we’ve begun to glorify suicide. The increase in assisted suicide – especially for those who are not dying or even physically suffering – is, some say, a terrifying step toward population control, especially of the most vulnerable in the population. Giving suicide meaning and purpose is a dangerous move, but one that pro-euthanasia activists and social justice warriors alike seem to be endorsing. In fact, Canada has even bragged about increasing its supply of donated organs due to euthanizing its own citizens, and about reducing healthcare costs as a result of, well, killing its patients. 

It’s become more and more common to see human life as a burden, whether that means citing “overpopulation” as a reason for climate change or too many sick people as a reason for the struggling Canadian healthcare system. Some climate activists have even begun seeing themselves as the problem, killing themselves for the planet. In any case, treating people’s lives as a problem to be solved rather than as the ultimate purpose of society is a slippery slope that should cause people to run in the opposite direction, not feel a sense of purpose.

Closing Thoughts

The self-harm politics getting popular today couldn’t be further from the social justice histories they’re trying to copy. Instead of actually being aimed toward a concrete goal, these protests are more an expression of distress from young people who feel traumatized by world events but powerless to do anything to make a real difference. Rather than driving toward productive ends, they create victimhood out of thin air and treat suffering like progress.

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