The attempt at self-immolation in front of the White House by an alleged FBI terrorist informer is a sign of frustration and protest. Gruesome as it is, self-immolation as a mode of protest is not new, and is intended as the ultimate sacrifice, in a manner not intended to hurt anyone else. While it comes nowhere near the powerful anti-violent protests pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi and later Martin Luther King, self-immolation has been used as a means of protest by Liu Chunling in Tiananmen Square in 2001, proponents of affirmative action in India, farmers, bicyclists in San Francisco and many other recent incidents in Europe & the United States.

A psychosocial study of self-immolation of 22 college students in India found that

All subjects except one were free of manifest psychopathology. The group as a whole had a high score on Pierce's Suicide Intent Scale and displayed internal locus of control orientation. Most were ambitious, aggressive, hostile and felt alienated. The absence of manifest psychopathology sets this group apart from cases of deliberate self-harm arising in the context of psychiatric morbidity. Thwarted ambitions, a sense of alienation and intropunitive hostility can lead to protest which at times becomes altruistic and results in self-immolation.

in 1963,David Halberstam, an American journalist, witnessed the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc in protest against the dictatorship of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who had persistently favoured the country's Catholic minority. This form of protest oftentimes sees expression in the form of hunger strikes. The fast-unto-death is a favorite mode of protest, normally broken conveniently before it is too late.

One commonality between all the examples cited is that it is the reaction of an individual to absolutism & the State, on a stage where one actor towers over the rest, and there is a sense of frustration in society. It is often considered an action of the 'infantile left', although it is more a personal action that has no label. The most recent example may or may not turn out to fit the pattern.

What could be worse is that this incident might signal an underlying frustration, resentment and mute protest within Western society