On Sept. 11 at 8:15 p.m, Nelson set himself ablaze outside of the Israeli consulate in Downtown Boston to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza. He was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he remains in critical condition.

Matt Nelson is the 3rd American to self-immolate in protest of U.S. involvement in the genocide.

Nelson is preceded by Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old former Air Force serviceman, who self-immolated in front of Washington D.C.’s Israeli Embassy on Feb. 25, 2024. Bushnell died the following day. In Atlanta, an unnamed protestor was left in critical condition after she wrapped herself with a Palestinian flag and self-immolated outside the city’s Israeli Consulate on Dec. 1, 2023.

‍Despite the extreme nature of Nelson’s protest, Boston news outlets have remained mostly silent.

The Boston Globe has published nothing about Matt Nelson’s self-immolation, save for a clarifying tweet about one of their employees who is also named Matt Nelson. WCVB, a Boston TV station, did report on the event, but only through a 20-second video clip that briefly mentioned the Israeli Consulate. Similar to WCVB, NBC10 Boston undermined the political nature of Nelson’s self-immolation, emphasizing that he set himself ablaze in front of the Four Seasons hotel rather than the Consulate. None of the aforementioned news outlets featured Nelson’s video testimony, which explicitly states he self-immolated to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Self-immolation has been regarded as a suicidal act by Western news outlets since the 1960's.

The act of self-immolation dates back centuries, but was popularized by Thích Quang Đúc, a Buddhist monk who self-immolated in 1963 to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. Many news organizations have attributed Nelson’s and Bushnell’s acts of protest as an elaborate form of suicide rather than what it truly is: political self-sacrifice.

‍Matt Nelson was placed on life support following his self-immolation.

In an article by the Cape Cod Times, friends of Nelson recounted his love for live concerts and the Grateful Dead. Some have speculated that his self-immolation was inspired not just by political protest, but by his own personal losses. Nelson’s mother passed away on Aug. 20, 2024 and he had recently broken up with his girlfriend prior to his self- immolation. Regardless of his personal life, Nelson bravely laid his life on the line to advocate for Palestinian liberation.