Man identified by police as Max Azzarello, from Florida, declared dead after incident outside lower Manhattan courthouse
A man has died after setting himself on fire outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush-money trial is taking place.
The New York City police department said on Saturday the man had been declared dead by staff at an area hospital.
Officials had said earlier the man, who was in his late 30s, was in critical condition.
The New York police department said the man, who they identified as Max Azzarello of St Augustine, Florida, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial.
Witnesses said the man pulled pamphlets out of a backpack and threw them in the air before he doused himself with a liquid and set himself on fire on Friday. One of those pamphlets included references to “evil billionaires” but portions that were visible to a Reuters witness did not mention Trump.
Another case for, at a minimum, universal mental health care.
I don’t think you can advocate for universal mental health care without universal health care. Mental health care is health care.
There’s a reason where I am that a mental health clinician is part of the cancer team. Having just the therapy aspect covered would do nothing for people unable to treat their physical illnesses.
Promoting better accessibility of mental health care is reasonable- even places with universal coverage mental health lags behind. The tricky thing is that some people will refuse to access care even if its available. Its more visible in cases like this but happens all the time with other chronic illnesses like COPD and diabetes where it gets out of control and the person succumbs quietly.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I wish he had sought help and I wish that help was available. I’m glad no one else lost their lives in this case.
It seems to me, at least in suburban middle class liberal millennial circles, that mental healthcare is getting a lot more destigmatized.
I hope this anecdote is part of an actual trend, and it expands to other demographics.
I dunno, I kind of remain pretty skeptical of that being the case. For just as much as I’ve seen that mental health concerns are getting de-stigmatized, I’ve, in almost equal measure, seen all manner of people throwing around terms with absolutely no meaning, taking identification in certain terms without really understanding or elaborating a clear case for their use. I’ve also seen just as many people call, say, someone who sets themselves on fire “insane”, and effectively use various mental health stuff as a thought-terminating cliche, as a kind of offhanded dismissal of anything that makes them feel bad, or they don’t like. Just mechanisms by which they can slot people into boxes and promptly file them away to be forgotten.
So I dunno, I beware the idea that it’s just gonna get swept up, like everything else, into like, middle class liberal self-help bullshit.
While I do think that we do need universal mental health care (and universal health care in general), I’m not sure it would have helped in this situation. The thing about mental health care is that you can’t force it on anyone, they have to want it themselves. He had friends who tried to get him help but he wouldn’t take it, and there’s only so much that can be done if he refuses. It’s like the old saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
“so you’re saying we need a fire suppressant grenade launcher? we’ll get right on it.”
A firefighting low-power 40mm grenade would actually be a dope idea, though I don’t know how effective it would be. There’s been attempts at similar “grenade” type extinguishers you toss.
My highdea is a firetruck that has cans of compressed nitrogen, and a firehose of sorts that’s got some resistive heating elements lining all the inside of it (that can be turned on or off). Then it just dumps out nitrogen at a huge CFM/PSI/whatever, displacing the oxygen quickly enough to blow out the fire, but not long enough to suffocate the immolator.
Basically a huge, super powered hand dryer. That chokes the fire. And a 50/50 shot as to whether it’s nice and warm or freezing fucking cold.
You think better access to psychological care won’t reduce instances of self-immolation?
I feel bad for this guy. I mean, he felt passionate enough about his cause to feel that the only way to draw attention to it was to self-immolate. But his cause is… what, exactly? I’ve read a few articles and couldn’t really figure it out.
It seems to me he was a bright guy who believed what he read on the Internet, and when his mother passed he lost any moderating influence in his life, so that he had no one to pull him out of the conspiracy theories. It was the lack of critical thinking that killed him in the end.
His manifesto is at https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside
He was clearly mentally ill.
I was skeptical of the mental illness angle until I clicked on the link. This guy was deeply into conspiracy theories.
Lastly, we string these major discoveries together: Cryptocurrency is an economic doomsday device; our government is a secret kleptocracy; The Simpsons exists to brainwash us.
It’s always heartbreaking when people grow skeptical of neoliberalism (and the greedy, self-serving people who push it), only to be preyed upon by groups like neo-nazis, conspiracy theorists and crypto bros.
Anywhere you find people who are frustrated, depressed or paranoid, you’ll find extremists using that vulnerability to groom more extremists.
I mean, a lot of what crypto has become is pretty Ponzi-ish. But yeah, he’s a bit deeper off the conspiracy cliff than that.
…and the two parties do seem to work together. Also, tech billionaires and their platforms do seem to promote and allow a lot of white supremacist propaganda on their websites.
So a lot of what he writes about seems to have a basis in reality.
When we piece it all together, we understand the truth: **We are in a totalitarian doomsday cult. **
Why on earth would our elites do this? There are many reasons, but the simplest is because capitalism is unsustainable, and they knew it: Climate change and resource extraction would catch up eventually. So, they never intended to sustain it. They knew all along that they would gobble up all the wealth they could, and then yank the rug out from under us so they could pivot to a hellish fascist dystopia.
Yeah I too think he was likely mentally ill. But damn if this didn’t resonate.
It should be noted that for-profit media companies will play dumb on any protest critical of the types of people that own and run for-profit media companies.
During the “occupy” protests, it was common to see reporters staring into the camera and asking “but what are these protests about?” in front signs stating exactly what the protests were about. They knew if they fairly reported on the movement, their audience might start agreeing with the protesters. So both “left wing” and “right wing” media companies held hands and united to undermine it.
But without that reporting, fuck knows. If he’s posting on reddit conspiracy subs, they’ve become a place for extremists to recruit the stupid and the clinically paranoid.
His Instagram tells a really sad story. He was an infrequent poster of perfectly ordinary content. No sign of any mental illness: pictures of his sisters wedding, some jokes, nothing concerning.
Then, some posts about the death of his mother and almost right after, his sharp decline in mental health becomes apparent.
He was apparently active on Reddit and posted semi-often in the /r/conspiracy subreddit
These claims sound like fantastical conspiracy theory, but they are not. They are proof of conspiracy
That’s not how claims work, buddy.
Lastly, we string these major discoveries together: Cryptocurrency is an economic doomsday device; our government is a secret kleptocracy; The Simpsons exists to brainwash us. From there, the only research we need is critical thinking and we’re able to piece together the true story of our circumstances.
Wait, I thought we were supposed to use that all throughout, not at the very end!?
TL;DR Yeah, the guy clearly had a screw loose. Jumping from unfounded (conspiracy) theory to another. At least he was not a Nazi, I guess - he hated everyone* equally.
* everyone being “the government”, “Crypo-anything”, even a few billionaires!
Lesson of the day: don’t self immolate. The most you’ll get from your opponents and sympathizers are shrugs.
Yeah if you really wanted to send a message, you’d set those evil billionaires on fire not yourself.
Or just “Don’t kill yourself.” Unless maybe you’re about to be tortured into revealing secrets that could get innocent people harmed and you have a cyanide pill. Otherwise, suicide is pretty much always going to be too much medicine for the sickness. Things are bad? Killing yourself guarantees they will never get better.
I realize it’s easy to simply say this, but it’s still true…
I think I understand the sentiment here, but you are assuming no matter how bad it is, the state a person is living in is inherently better than death. I think you’d find a lot of people can imagine a life worse than death. Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness. That sounds better than unhappy life to me, and it definitely sounds better than miserable life.
Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness. That sounds better than unhappy life to me, and it definitely sounds better than miserable life.
That sounds better, but I kind of doubt that realistically anyone can actually understand what “no more consciousness” realistically means, because it’s axiomatically opposed to the idea of consciousness itself, to the degree that you cannot experience it. “oh I get it when I go to bed” or “oh it’d just be black nothingness with no thought” yeah that’s bullshit. People think that cause they smoked weed and it shut off their internal monologue, that’s the same as true oblivion. It’s not, it’s imperceptible, by it’s very nature. Maybe you could make an argument against fearing on that basis, on the basis that it’s un-understandable, much as epicurus did, in fact, that’s an argument I’d make, but that’s a different argument altogether.
you are assuming no matter how bad it is, the state a person is living in is inherently better than death.
I didn’t say that. My point is more that ending a life (including your own) is permanent and irreversible.
Death means everything is over, blank, no more consciousness.
You don’t know that, no one does.
Not trying to be argumentative, just clarifying…
Well definitely don’t kill yourself for a random political reason. Especially for an individual that isn’t even in power currently. Also don’t kill yourself if he ever gets into power, because how on Earth does that help?
But then again we’re attempting to apply logic to a situation where it clearly was absent.
For law enforcement maybe they shouldn’t rescue after a certain amount of time 😔? Like that was 2 minutes. Maybe cut off at 1 minute? I don’t know, it sounds so painful. One of my family members was burnt accidentally by hot liquid and those years of pain and suffering are a mark in my life and obviously in their life. Imagine 100C vs 800 to 1200C in a fire, and instead of just a single burn, continuous burn for minutes? 😞 And to survive that to live one more entire day in possible the most painful way possible.
Cops are not doctors and not individuals I would want making that kind of call
I imagine your nerves die off after a certain moment. That said, I’ve willingly burned myself enough that I can only imagine the intense body pain as it happens. I’d also imagine your lungs feel like they’re also on fire during it, smoke inhalation sucks.
I imagine your nerves die off after a certain moment. That said, I’ve willingly burned myself enough that I can only imagine the intense body pain as it happens
This is most certainly the case after a certain case. The lack of oxygen able to get to the lungs as a result of fire inhalation is probably capable of putting someone down within about three minutes, if that, probably much sooner, and probably sooner than your nerves would bake, I’d wager. That’s all if the shock and trauma of being on fire doesn’t cause you to pass out or otherwise shut down before that happens, which I’d also wager would be the case for most.
The New York police department said the man, who they identified as Max Azzarello of St Augustine, Florida, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial.
It took The Guardian four paragraphs to get to that. This is why Trump’s people are going to turn this guy into a martyr. Because the media isn’t making it clear enough that this had nothing to do with Trump.
“did not appear to be targeting Trump”…“A pamphlet angry at evil billionaires”
I could see Trump being triggered that the guy coming to protest rich people was not there for him.
Yeah the media is trying to silence this man’s message, a lot of the national news won’t even bring up his immolation. Even the locals have dialed back mentioning anything about his message, only saying “he did not breech the perimeter of security” about the event. He died to bring an important message, it feels wrong to bury it. If it is crazy, let the people decide for themselves: https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside
Thanks for the link.
TL;DR: the world is in a Ponzi scheme, the elite are using cryptocurrency to get richer, all of the elite are in this together including politicians “competing” with each other, and the only possible outcome is either societal collapse or a fascist state. And The Simpsons and other media proves this is true.
There was also this:
In order to explain the massive anomaly [massive stock growth and drop], our criminal government unleashed COVID on the world and told us these were the “stay at home stocks.”
There are components of his theory that ring true, but the cherry-picked examples and the strange conclusions of how points are connected definitely made it read like a conspiracy theorist.
Despite that, one of the points he makes early on is to apologize to those he will hurt with his self-immolation, including witnesses and first responders. That fact alone gives me empathy for him. He truly believed his conclusions, and it drove him to this awful action.
Paranoid Schizophrenia is a hell of a thing.
