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.
His manifesto is at https://theponzipapers.substack.com/p/i-have-set-myself-on-fire-outside
He was clearly mentally ill.
I want to live in the timeline where he got the right treatment/producer to make a podcast or video series using Simpsons scenes to describe macroeconomic theories
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.
It becomes more crazy looking the more he tries to connect everything he is suspicious of into some grand interlinked conspiracy with some grand unified masterplan.
Yeah:
Aren’t we all pretty sure the wealthy classes seem to have different rules applied to them? Lighter sentences, less likelihood of being arrested, better treatment when they do get arrested.t Much shorter sentences in prisons which compare holiday resorts. I mean the first time Epstein was arrested for sex crimes he was allowed to leave the prison in daylight hours.
… doesn’t that start to look like elites are in a criminal conspiracy? That other elites create these conditions for them? Eg. Wealthy elite schools producing unchecked criminality, and sharing the secrets of getting these better conditions?
Like Harvard is a crime school?
Claiming Democrats and Republicans work together on anything seems a pretty crazy suggestion these days.
You should pay closer attention. There are plenty of party-line votes on “culture war” bullshit, but there are also plenty of times in which they engage in bipartisanship to screw us. For example, they just not only renewed but also expanded FISA spying.
I would think many conspiracy theories do have nuggets of truth in them, but the problem comes from interpreting them incorrectly. See “The Voyager Conspiracy” S6E9 of Voyager for an example.
I had a realisation today I’ve never seen anywhere before: Voyager would have been greatly improved had Tom Paris “grown a beard”.
Well yeah, many of them do have nuggets of truth, it becomes “conspiracy theory” when linking it all together in one big plot against humanity organised by a few people.
The “big” truth is often even scarier then any big conspiracy theory: we are ruled by things that come/happen together by accident. We are ruled by chaos. Some are powerful, but not a single few people are ever completely in control of everything.
Yeah I too think he was likely mentally ill. But damn if this didn’t resonate.