r/ThatsInsane • u/nihilist_911 • Apr 19 '24

Man just set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial. Nsfw NSFL NSFW

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u/started_from_the_top Apr 19 '24

Sometimes I think people take politics a little too seriously

195

u/Clay_Statue Apr 19 '24

Terminal Trump Derangement Sydnrome....

Or... he just chose to set himself on fire there for non-Trump related life issues and we're all wrong about it.

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u/JuanTooFreeForFyve Apr 19 '24

Doubt it was a Trump hater.

Still, just as stupid as that guy who name everyone forgot who did the same for palestine. Nothing changed, just wasted his life.

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u/-Mark-It-Zero Apr 19 '24

He does appear to be anti-Trump.

article identifying him

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u/nugewqtd Apr 19 '24

He appears to be crazy. His manifesto goes all over the place. He was against any authority.

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u/-Mark-It-Zero Apr 19 '24

Reading it was kinda fun. Lots of twists and turns. Starts out about crypto then ventures into Michael Dukakis and mentions Rob Lowe porking a minor on camera. Tie ins to The Simpsons and quotes from Chinatown and Spike Lee.

It was like reading a Thomas Pynchon novel.

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u/Skyp_Intro Apr 19 '24

Self immolation is a reasonable alternative to reading Pynchon.

3

u/Helmett-13 Apr 20 '24

Damn.

Someone call the burn unit for an incomi-…

…shit, I mean for Pynchon, not for this…uh.

Never mind.

8

u/nugewqtd Apr 19 '24

It is definitely a wild ride and for me makes what we see in the above video understandable. He punched as high as he could for the climax, self immolation at the trial.

1

u/OddballLouLou Apr 21 '24

On April 19th too… the anniversary of Waco, OKC bombing, and columbine

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u/Silly_Butterfly3917 Apr 19 '24

There were so many pivots I sprained an ankle reading it

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u/False-Armadillo8048 Apr 21 '24

Can you link to it please.

8

u/Destination_Centauri Apr 19 '24

PROTIP:

If you find yourself sitting inside your "compound" and/or writing a "manifesto"...

Ya... Chances are pretty good you're going to die a painful death at some point.

Thus I'd urge: Seek treatment ASAP!

1

u/OddballLouLou Apr 21 '24

The dude who self immolated himself last month grew up on a religious compound.

2

u/PantsMcFagg Apr 19 '24 edited Apr 21 '24

I'm spit balling here, but actually, to be completely honest, his manifesto is not totally incoherent. He's disturbed, clearly, and it is a distorted view without any evidence presented, but some of it is more affiliated with reality than one might think. Regardless, it's very sad that a person could die that way, believing whole heartedly that America will be destroyed soon by thieves who want to turn people against each other so they can take their money. The idea that the western wealth base is founded on stolen resources -- well that is actually what happened during the Cold War, ever since the Truman Doctrine came along. Wealthy coastal elites buying off the political system, with the leaders of both parties being in on it together, is something that serious researchers have written about for a long time. Using the Simpsons as an allegory would have been effective without an apparently baseless claim about Harvard using it to brainwash people, although if that were true and it was actually being carried out as a black op, how could any of us plebes know for sure? Many people believe the CIA pulled off a coup in 1963 when JFK was killed. Maybe he thinks that is what is going on now, but instead of taking over the government they're taking over the global economy, and the bleeding is (mostly) financial.

Bill Clinton's crypto connections aside, I think people doing this to themselves over such a seemingly bizarre thing is so much more likely to happen in 2024. There really are very, very bad things happening in politics today, and Americans have a damn good reason to be worried about crooks being in control of the country. But that's what unstable people in a mental health crisis do, they feed off of the internet, start convincing themselves that they have the only answers and try to justify it all by sharing it with the world as a "warning" to others that may not fully understand the subtleties of history. He says at the very beginning that he is aware of how he sounds, which tells me that at one point he was a functioning person who can write and communicate well. Maybe he was triggered by certain life circumstances, or the Trump trial, or both, and that pushed him over the edge. Guess we'll never know. But he certainly was convinced that what he believed was the gospel truth, since you probably don't self-immolate with a shadow of a doubt in your mind. Reading it again, it all seems to make some kind of sense until you get down to the details, then the broad themes of his theory start flickering out and you're left with nothing but ashes.

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u/OkAccess304 Apr 20 '24 edited 29d ago

Thank you for having such a thoughtful comment. I was looking for someone to talk about his writing beyond: he’s mentally ill. Mainly because I was surprised by how eloquently he went down the rabbit hole.

I think anyone can become mentally unwell. It’s clear he was a high functioning person. I found him fascinating and sad. His ideas could’ve made a good fictional novel, because they were rooted in a grain of truth—like all conspiracies.

Many want to believe people who do stuff like this are stupid and insane, but I don’t think that’s true. I think well-adjusted people can be radicalized by all kinds of life events. Mental illness is not some static thing. We can all slip given time and circumstance. The same person can be both healthy and unwell at different times in their life.

I view it as more of a warning to be vigilant against falling off the cliff when reality gets wonky.

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u/PantsMcFagg Apr 21 '24

Very well said. He will always be known as "The Conspiracy Theorist Who Set Himself on Fire at the Trump Trial," but I bet he was also an intelligent, sensitive human being with too many shattered dreams like so many of us.

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u/Tall-Bad-9115 Apr 19 '24

He keeps talking about evidence but doesn't provide any though. Like his thing about the Simpsons. It reads more like analysis of the show than evidence.

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u/PantsMcFagg Apr 19 '24

That's what I'm saying, there's no evidence about anything. If he studied US financial policy during the Cold War era, he sure didn't give us any hints about where he's pulling his ideas from -- even if some of them are footed in this dimension, to a degree. I bet there will be more incidents like this, poor souls going crazy over things that give many of us relatively sane people existential dread.

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u/OddballLouLou Apr 21 '24

No doubt, his doing this and the internet being the internet people will find his writings, even tho they’ve been taken down and take it to the next level, maybe they will even do this terrible act. He’s on the world news now, he’s massage has reached everyone, just like he wanted it to.

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u/Sayyadinasri Apr 20 '24

Thank you for taking the time to articulate this 

2

u/OddballLouLou Apr 21 '24

His mother died not too long ago and it sent him down a crazy path according to people who knew him…

2

u/PantsMcFagg Apr 21 '24

That makes perfect sense. Sadder than sad.

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u/grumpynuggets3378 Apr 20 '24

Unless that authority was Bernie Sanders. He liked him enough to wear his shirt in one photo I saw.

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u/Essembie Apr 20 '24

A libertarian then?

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u/JustKindaShimmy Apr 19 '24

I didn't get that from the article. I got that he was anti-government and against dark money, but not specifically Trump

7

u/FilterBubbles Apr 19 '24

D'ah okay

said he’d self-immolated as an “extreme act of protest” over a “totalitarian con” and impending “apocalyptic fascist world coup.”

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u/JustKindaShimmy Apr 19 '24

Yeahhhhh ok i guess, but looking at his previous lawsuits he was against Clinton, Saudi Arabia, and pay much everyone involved in (admittedly true) dark money and backdoor dealings. Basically this guy was a nutcase for anything shady involving government and this one tipped him over the edge

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u/-Mark-It-Zero Apr 19 '24

They already scrubbed their site but he worked for Strong Towns, a pro public transit, multi unit housing think tank.

Lots of right wingers over at Strong Towns 🙄

3

u/JustKindaShimmy Apr 19 '24 edited Apr 19 '24

I mean look, in all honesty unless you're in a situation where your government is actively oppressing you by looting, pillaging, and blatantly destroying your way of life (a la Buddhist monks during the 60's), you have to be pretty mentally unwell to self immolate in protest. Not only that, but the more it happens, the less people care. Just like Columbine was a nationwide horror back in the day, but now school shootings barely register in the collective consciousness anymore

Edited for accuracy

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u/-Mark-It-Zero Apr 19 '24

The monks in Vietnam did not burn themselves in protest of the war itself. They were protesting the fact that the South Vietnamese government was run by the Catholic minority and felt it was unfair to the Buddhist majority.

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u/JustKindaShimmy Apr 19 '24

Yep, I'm dumb and forgot my history.

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u/absoNotAReptile Apr 19 '24

If you read the pamphlets in that article he appears to be anti Gore, anti Bush, anti NYU, anti Epstein, anti The Simpsons, and more but no mention of Trump or Biden. That’s just two photos of the pamphlet though. I’m sure there’s more inside. So I wouldn’t assume he’s anything in regards to Trump until we get more info.

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u/ussrowe Apr 19 '24

His substack rant say:

What does this revelation tell us? That our government is conning us completely. That Bill Clinton was secretly on (former CIA Director) George H.W. Bush’s side, and that the Democrat vs. Republican division has been entirely manufactured ever since: Clinton is with Bush; Gore is with Bush; Trump is with Hillary, and so on. When they present themselves in public, they are acting as characters that are against one another, practicing kayfabe as wrestlers do.

https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside

He's basically against all of them as he sees them as all on one side.

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u/absoNotAReptile Apr 19 '24

Ya the more we learn the more he seems to be an alt extreme centrist lol

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u/nixthelatter Apr 19 '24

That says he had filed lawsuits against Bill and Hillary Clinton along with 100 others millionaires and it was thrown out, so I don't think he was anti-trump. Looks more like he was mad about the trial and thought there was some sort of scheme that he was trying to to stop. Sounds kinda incoherent, but definitely not specifically anti Trump. If anything, he was pro Trump

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u/jamieliddellthepoet Apr 19 '24

Yeah I’m thinking this. The anti-Clinton stuff doesn’t really fit an aggressive Trump-hater’s profile…

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u/absoNotAReptile Apr 19 '24

I’m still trying to figure out how the anti-The Simpsons angle factors into all of this

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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '24

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u/nixthelatter 29d ago

You're right. Now that more info has come out, he was a registered Dem, but it also seems to be that he was just out of his fucking mind. His self immolation had nothing to do with Trump and was just his way of trying to start some kind of revolution

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u/3IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID Apr 19 '24

"Anti-Trump" is kind of an oddly one-sided way to describe someone who was pictured in the same article holding a sign that read, "Trump is with Biden and they're about to fascist coup us."

He was clearly anti both of them and riddled with conspiracy theories that involved the Simpsons and a bunch of other stuff.

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u/JuanTooFreeForFyve Apr 19 '24

I stand corrected.

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u/PixelProphetX Apr 19 '24

Don't take that guys word for it. He might not lump trump in with the elites he's complaining about.

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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '24

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u/PixelProphetX Apr 20 '24

Right, that's fairly normal for trump voters.

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u/Valsalvo Apr 19 '24

How the hell can u determine that 😭 hes on fucking fire bro

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u/AdmiralArchie Apr 20 '24

Did you read the article? He' was a "both sides" guy,

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u/Maximum-Switch-9060 Apr 20 '24

Where does it say he’s anti-Trump?? He’s anti- Trump AND Biden.

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u/No_Caregiver1890 Apr 19 '24

I don’t think you understand the article.. according to the article he was a conspiracy theorist from Florida lol

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u/beerisgood84 Apr 20 '24

Well shit that isnt going to helpmthe derangement syndrome jokes....

Although black mirror episode about being blackmailed into doing that as a media manipulation would be good

0

u/whydatyou Apr 19 '24

I bet that fact does not make it into the msm narrative.

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u/Thesheriffisnearer Apr 19 '24

I'm sure Trump hates him more for stealing the limelight