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Lady, I'm not sure we're supposed to be 'admiring' this person, or at least I'm not sure that when someone takes such an action, they're asking to be admired and praised. It seems pretty clear to me that for Ritscher to do this, he must have felt as if the things in his life that might have previously held him 'together' or made him feel like life was worth living had fallen through.
Suicide is the most powerful expression of self-hatred it's possible to make: self-immolation -- which I read as about intensely painful death, not just 'spectacle' -- is probably one of the most self-punishing forms of suicide available. When a person already has really idealistic dreams of being able to change the world, the failure to change anything can rsult in feeling really powerless, disenchanted, self-hating, despairing. I'm seeing it as a response to those feelings. In that case, I think it's impossible to 'hate' this person for the violence he did to others. It's so evidently not about directing violence towards others....
I also wonder how it's possible that this guy could have been involved in so many anti-war and alternative music communities without someone picking up on what he was doing. My experience of left social movements is that a lot of the time, people are willing to harness the energies of people everyone knows are a bit unstable, because they can be really focused. Working intensely on a protest can make people feel really important, as if they've found a goal in life and a whole new set of intense friendships -- particularly if the protests are traumatic or if they result in arrests. That intensity is addictive. When the protest or project ends, normal life can feel alienating and lonely even for people who have lots of friends and who have great coping skills. For the people who are already a bit unstable, or whose social skills may not be terrific, suddenly they find themselves really alone, and the social relationships that were so important during the intense organising time might not continue in normal life. Maybe that's part of what happened here?
And frankly, I think the topic title sucks. 'Martyr' or 'terrorist': what meaning do those words have, except as labels to lionise or condemn any person's actions as directed outward towards the world or representation, wholly impersonal and inhuman? |
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I got he title from the media, and did refrain from trying to come up with an original. It was a quickie and this was due to my quandaries over whether or not the guy even deserved a mention. Again I ponder over whether or not to hit "post reply" or close the browser window like so so many of my other posts.