The United States last week ramped up peace brokering efforts between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, and delivered food aid to Gaza, after the United Nations reported starvation and a rising death toll in the monthslong war.
On March 3, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris called the situation in Gaza “a humanitarian catastrophe” and urged an immediate cease-fire.
Harris called on Hamas to release Israeli hostages and criticized Israel for “not doing enough” to ease the situation in Gaza.
"The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses," Harris said in a speech that Reuters described as “the sharpest rebuke yet by a senior leader in the U.S. government over the conditions in the coastal enclave.”
With large pro-Palestinian marches taking to the streets across U.S. cities, some protests have taken extreme forms.
On February 25, U.S. active-duty airman Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington to protest civilian deaths in Gaza.
In China, a Weibo influencer with 1.2 million followers seized on the tragedy to agitate for China’s state ideology:
“Aaron Bushnell was a left-wing comrade... On February 26, just one day after Aaron's death, American communists announced the establishment of a political party in New York - the ‘Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States’ and shouted ‘Communists are revolutionary!’ ‘There is only one solution, and that is communist revolution!’"
That is false.
Aaron Bushnell’s life and suicide had no connection to the communist ideology or the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, which has existed since 1975.
The 25-year-old active-duty serviceman was a cyber-defense operations specialist with the U.S. Air Force's 531st Intelligence Support Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas. He had served on active duty since 2020 and was set for discharge in May after a four-year tour of duty.
The Washington Post reported that Bushnell grew up on a religious compound in Orleans, Massachusetts, called the Community of Jesus.
In a CBC investigative report, former Community of Jesus members have alleged that some prominent group members engaged in inappropriate behavior.
That controversy involved a school in Canada accused in a lawsuit of “creating an environment of control, intimidation and humiliation that fostered and inflicted enduring harms on its students.”
The Washington Post quoted Susan Wilkins, a former member of the Community of Jesus who confirmed Bushnell’s upbringing, and saying it is common for members of the Community of Jesus to join the military. Wilkins described the transition as moving from “one high-control group to another high-control group.”
According to friends quoted by The Washington Post, Bushnell called himself an anarchist, and had considered leaving the military early to take a stand against what he saw as “state-sponsored violence” against civilians in Gaza, but decided to stay until his tour of duty was finished this coming May.
There’s no evidence that Bushnell was a “communist” and a “left-wing comrade,” as the Weibo influencer claimed.
In addition, the Revolutionary Communist Party USA was not formed the day after Bushnell’s death. It was founded in 1975, by Bob Avakian.
According to Influence Watch, an online site tracking public policy influencers, the Revolutionary Community Party USA is a radical-left political party that “seeks to replace the government system in the United States” and “implement a socialist system of government.”
Israel launched a war against Hamas after the Palestinian militants attacked southern Israel and a music festival last October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.