At UCLA’s medical school, suicide is a valid protest against societal pathologies

Last month, Aaron Bushnell, a member of the United States Air Force, decided to show his support for Hamas by setting himself ablaze. It was, perhaps, an appropriate form of suicide given that Hamas burned alive and otherwise tortured in medieval ways hundreds of Israelis prior to executing them, along with those whom they simply shot to death.

Bushnell was obviously a deeply sick man, whether because he was mentally ill or just plain evil, I do not know. However, at the UCLA Medical School, in the psychiatry department, he was celebrated as a mentally healthy man making a reasonable protest against America, a sick society. This isn’t just creepy; it’s also how you create a society of future suicide bombers.

Psychiatry residents Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa (whose names indicate but do not prove that they are Muslim) gave a joint presentation that the school’s diversity office and Health Ethics Center sponsored. In their talk, the two women offered a mind-numbing combination of woke-speak and psychiatric-speak (aka gibberish) to argue that there’s nothing mentally ill about setting yourself ablaze, one of the more painful ways to die. (And again, something Hamas freely used against Israelis, including babies, many of whom they’d tortured in other ways first.)

Image: A world where Satan is your psychiatrist by Andrea Widburg using AI.

For Izar and Moustafa, the suicide was a reasonable form of resistance…not that Bushnell, an American citizen and resident, actually had anything against which he was resisting. If one takes what these radical women are saying to its logical conclusion, they are preparing the students to whom they’re speaking to accept as normal and even admirable protest suicide that can easily morph into suicide bombings. After all, that’s what children in Gaza and the West Bank are raised to believe: Killing yourself while killing others is a good thing.

I can’t adequately summarize the insanity of these two fast-talking women whose pressed speech itself seems deeply off if we’re talking about pathology. I’ll just embed Aaron Sibarium’s thread for your review. It’s notable because it’s not just these women who are spreading the madness. The thread also incorporates other ways in which the institution teaches students to hate America and Israel and, along the way, trains them not to recognize as a problem personally and societally harmful thoughts and behavior (including encouraging failed transgender “affirmations” to end in suicide).

This woke madness also infects UCSF Medical School, which was long considered the premier school in the UC franchise. At this point, a wise person avoids any recent medical school graduates. Even if they learned some medicine, they are also learning truly evil ideas along with that hard knowledge.

One more thing before you read the thread: Whether you live in California or not, you’re paying for this garbage. The University of California system gets enormous amounts of federal funds both directly and indirectly (and the link doesn’t even talk about the grants for research projects).

The talk, “Depathologizing Resistance,” was delivered on April 2 by two psychiatry residents at UCLA, Drs. Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa, under the auspices of the department’s diversity office and UCLA’s Health Ethics Center.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

Bushnell was widely seen as a casualty of mental illness. The presentation argued he could also be considered a “martyr,” a man in full control of his mental faculties who had responded rationally to a “genocide” unfolding thousands of miles away. pic.twitter.com/y1WDotUEWk

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

By “perpetuating the stigma of self-immolation,” Izar and Moustafa said, psychiatrists “discredit” resistance to “power structures” like “colonization,” “homophobia,” and “white supremacy,” framing legitimate acts of protest as signs of psychiatric dysfunction. pic.twitter.com/s8zvRHjtkR

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

Their contentions undercut official guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warns that “bestowing honor and admiration” on suicide victims can inspire others to take their own lives. https://t.co/tPJULT8aTp

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

“For mental health professionals to encourage removing the stigma is reckless” and could “lead to an increase in the number of individuals who protest in this tragic and horrifyingly painful fashion,” Kaminetzky said.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

Izar and Moustafa’s talk is the latest lecture to rock UCLA medical school, which hosted Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, a self-described “poverty scholar,” as a guest speaker in its mandatory “structural racism” course in March. https://t.co/pd5cF4Lawt

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

The spectacle followed news that UCLA had divided its medical students into race-based discussion groups and assigned them readings on “indigenous resistance,” “decolonization,” and “settler colonialism.”

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

Another told psychiatrists to “embed your practice with an anti-colonial lens” and “recognize that mental health is intimately tied to liberation.” pic.twitter.com/0GVilUGrcI

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

hat remark drew blowback from Vivian Burt, an emeritus psychiatry professor at UCLA, who testified about the lecture at a meeting of the University of California Board of Regents on Wednesday. https://t.co/rBhrGpFcqF

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

The talk argued that concerns about copycat suicide are selective and politically loaded, using former president Barack Obama’s praise of Mohamed Bouazizi—the Tunisian street vendor who helped jumpstart the Arab Spring when he self-immolated in 2010—as an example.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

It’s true that self-immolation is more acceptable outside the West, Kaminetzky said. And it’s true that Americans have greeted certain acts of self-immolation, including Bouazizi’s, with more fanfare than Bushnell’s. BUT…

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

“Given that self-immolation is not part of Western culture, individuals in the West who choose to protest by ending their life likely have multiple mental health and other challenges,” Kaminetzky told the Free Beacon.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

Toward the end of their talk, Izar and Moustafa brought up the Goldwater Rule, which states that psychiatrists should not comment on the mental health of people they haven’t evaluated. pic.twitter.com/myhALsIe9J

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

“In the same way that we shouldn’t be commenting on political candidates running for president,” Izar said, it’s unclear “what authority do we have as psychiatrists to publicly comment upon instances of revolutionary suicide and other acts of resistance.” pic.twitter.com/u3JVLNs0LH

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

Pediatricians got a vivid taste of the brave new world in 2022 when Morissa Ladinsky, in an address at the American Academy of Pediatrics’s annual conference, praised a transgender teenager, Leelah Alcorn, for “boldly … ending her life.” https://t.co/YmtelOb4bs

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024

The AAP warns against glorifying self-harm. So does the American Psychiatric Association to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. All these groups understand the dangers of suicide contagion. But the doctors increasingly don’t care. https://t.co/O6SVmLs0le

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 12, 2024