I'll Shoot Myself In Public ... That Will Stop Those Poofs Getting Married

Allowing homosexuals to marry will destroy civilization as we know it. I cannot bear to live in such a world. In protest, I’ll go to the biggest church I can find and shoot myself on the altar.

That’ll do the trick. My sacrifice will cause such an upwelling of support from the “silent majority” that a new kingdom of godly righteousness will be established and those gays and their filth will be consigned to the darkness from whence they came.

There are societies in which self immolation as a form of political protest is not condemned as lunacy and can even be successful. For example, the street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight and sparked the protests which eventually led to the overthrow of the Tunisian government. Some are less successful, such as the ongoing campaign in Tibet.

The societies in which such practice achieves some measure of legitimacy tend to be repressive, religious and place little importance on individual rights and liberty. Juxtaposed with a brutal regime’s remorselessness (and even pleasure) in harming its citizens while hoarding luxuries, a certain nobility is achieved by a shocking, ritual self sacrifice which eschews harming others, as opposed to a suicide bombing.

However, this is not the case in prosperous, largely open societies. It is more common to kill your literal enemies, or random representatives thereof, then kill yourself.

In societies without a strong subculture of martyrdom, only extremists or the emotionally unhinged choose ritual, public suicide as a method of making political statements. The shock value of political suicides in Western countries does often initially attract supporters to their cause, but such support often fades as issues of practical policy confront ideology.

Political suicide in open societies tends to alienate far more support than it gains, obscuring anything worthwhile that a complex, but troubled person may have said or done in their lives. So, yes, Marine Le Pen, Venner’s suicide was a political act, but in a Western country, an ultimately futile one.

Now that he has rendered himself a lunatic and idiot in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the population, Dominique Venner will likely only be remembered by most as the old, anti gay, reactionary who shot himself in Notre Dame Cathedral. His opinions on other matters will be wasted on the small fraction of the already converted. His reasonable warnings about Islamic immigration, their explicit refusal to assimilate and the left’s steadfast support of this destructive separatism will be easily painted with charges of right wing extremism, as will his decrying of the modern left’s program of destruction of pride in European cultural heritage. Worse, more moderate people who share such views are more easily dishonestly tarred with the extremist brush by the leftists who wish to stifle debate on such topics.

This is the problem when people with complex and often contradictory positions do acts which allow the media to use the act as a caricature of the person.

Having said that, I don’t think acts of political suicide such as Dominique Venner’s should necessarily be discouraged. As well as efficiently removing members of the opposition, such self culling enhances the position of moderate libertarians.

Perhaps fascists, socialists and general dickheads alike could make noble gestures of ritual self-immolation. Fred Nile could shoot himself in his own church. The Shooters could dress up as elephants and shoot themselves. Sarah Hanson-Young could sew her lips together and starve herself to death in support of the asylum seekers. Lee Rhiannon could hang herself in her yurt with a hemp rope (or maybe one made with hair from her armpits) in protest against, well, just about anything.

I would look forward to scouring the daily press for the latest activist to top themselves in some novel public statement.