"I Met Max In The Park. He Had a Lot to Talk About"
A stranger details her conversation with Max Azzarello the day before he lit himself on fire outside the Trump trial courthouse
“The alleged goal, Azzarello writes, is: ‘Tell us the American Dream is dead because we’re too oafish, divided and morally decayed while big business and government bleed us dry.’”
I was sitting at my kitchen island Friday afternoon answering emails when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize from a woman watching Trump’s trial live. "A man just set himself on fire on live TV!" she said. "Go look!"
Media was quick to dismiss him as a mentally ill conspiracy theorist, certainly not interested in diving into the claims he made in the Substack post he promoted by tossing printed pamphlets at the crowd before dousing himself with an alcohol-based cleaning substance and setting himself on fire outside the trial in Manhattan. The shock of it left me rattled, but got me thinking — are we so desensitized that we instantly disregard a man lighting himself on fire to deliver a message he thinks will save us from a fascist coup?
The brush on the ground where he set himself ablaze was still smoldering hours after his body was taken. Witnesses wandered around the area, visibly stunned by what they had just witnessed.
I couldn't shake it. Throughout the weekend I couldn't sleep. Regrettably, at some point, I watched two videos: One of him rolling around in flames as horrified onlookers screamed for help, and another of him, singed and gray, alive but in shock, being wheeled into a waiting ambulance as passing traffic and people on bicycles rode by. It was a scene straight out of a David Foster Wallace novel, evoking his penchant for highlighting the perverse absurdities of modern life through haunting flashes of dystopian catastrophe eclipsed by collective societal apathy, driven by the desire to maintain mundane routine in spite of a consistently crumbling country.
Saturday, the New York City police department said the man — identified as Max Azzarello of St. Augustine, Florida — was declared dead at a local hospital where he was taken for treatment after the incident on Friday.
Azzarello's self-sacrifice, seemingly triggered by his descent into a web of conspiracy theories outlined in his Substack publication, "The Ponzi Papers," left me yearning to know more about him, his mental state, and his beliefs. Was he crazy? If so, was he always crazy? His fear in these warnings was palpable, but he was articulate in his outline of them. He wasn’t alone. His distrust of the elites in power and the catastrophic events tied to them is widely shared. Many of you here read and found truth in them, too.
In his Substack manifesto, Azzarello drags us through a labyrinth of paranoid interconnected conspiracy theories focusing mainly on the crimes of cryptocurrency. His focus, of course, is grim; he warns that the world is run by a self-serving cabal, but he ends his rant with optimistic urging, reminding us that the death of the American Dream is sealed as fact only if we surrender to it.
His last sentence, however, leans into light: "I hope you know how powerful you are. I wish you a hell of a lot more than luck.”
One of the more perplexing aspects (overlooked because of the crypto conspiracy it centers on) is his interpretation of The Simpsons. He compared the show to various alleged conspiracies, implicating Harvard graduates within the show's writers' room. Simpsons conspiracies always grab my attention. I'm not especially versed in this area, but I do find it peculiar how the show basically lays the script for the future, and we all just marvel at how so many of the show's predictions come to fruition. How does a popular cartoon serve as fortune teller to our fate? Is it predictive programming in all its glaringly obvious glory? Or have we more or less surrendered to theories that the writers are either time travelers or spawn of Nostradamus?
I'm asking genuinely.
"He just got off probation and said finally I can go to New York and he went to New York like a few days after he got off probation," said Satterfield. "He said he wanted to be a political martyr and he meant it."
"I remember him sitting on the porch before he left saying he was going to be the martyr and I never thought it’d be anything like this," said Warren.
"I can’t believe he actually did it. It’s just shocking. That was crazy. I am like overwhelmed," they all said.” — Friends of Max via First Coast News
"I Met Max In The Park"
After I posted his manifesto on Friday, just as news of it broke, I noticed later that a woman in the comments named Sharon mentioned she had run into Max at the park the day before. Immediately, I was intrigued.
Yesterday, over text, she explained more about their interaction and her overall impression of him. Sharon told me she realized it was him after seeing his face in a video online:
"I was heartbroken when I saw the headlines about Max. He was not what they were making him out to be…I don't believe he had a mental illness. I did not get that vibe at all. I spoke to him the day before; he seemed very sane and intelligent. He was passionate about getting his message out. This is an extremely tragic story.”