Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to America' sparks existential crisis for young Americans, TikTok ban
SHAH ALAM - Thousands of young Americans have discovered Osama bin Laden’s infamous ‘Letter to America’ for the first time concluding the mastermind of the September 11, 2021 (9/11) that killed some 3,000 people had some good points.
In the letter, Osama claimed that 9/11 was retribution for the United States Cold War era meddling in the Middle East and support for Israel, which was guilty of occupying Palestinian land and oppressing the Palestinian people for decades.
Among the takeaways people were discussing now was how 9/11 attacks happened because of America’s support of Israel.
“They threw hundreds of thousands of soldiers against us and have formed an alliance with the Israelis to oppress us and occupy our land; that was the reason for our response on the eleventh,” a quote from the letter reads.
Among sentiments shared on social media users, mostly Americans, were how “everyone needs to go read this letter immediately”, “my entire viewpoint and life I have lived has changed” and that they were now experiencing an “existential crisis”.
Almost all content created about the letter urged everyone to come back - to their video - and discuss the matter.
One user @mutak09 said she was mind-blown after reading Osama’s letter, stating that propagandas were embedded so deep into the Americans' DNA.
“Terrorism has been sold as this idea to the American people and so many Western inhabitants within certain nations - this group of people, this random group people; just wakes up and hates you, wants you gone.
“They just hate you and just want you dead, want you gone just because they think they are better than you. That is the root of terrorism. It becomes apparent to me that the actions of 9/11 and those acts committed against the USA and its people are just the government’s failing other nations.
“This letter was really eye-opening and everyone should read it. I thought I had good media literacy but this just shows how propaganda is just embedded in our DNA,” she said.
Many of the videos were shared with the hashtag #lettertoamerica and by Thursday, views of those videos had exceeded 14 million.
Interest in the letter spiked so much that it prompted The Guardian - where users first discovered the letter from - to remove it from the website. The letter was first published in November 2002 - exactly 21 years ago this month.
Guardian readers were now met with the message, “This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the American people,’ as reported in the Observer on Sunday, 24 November 2002. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023.”
A spokesman from the British news outlet said: “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualised it instead.”
TikTok has also removed all content relating to the matter, where a quick search by Sinar Daily on the app with keywords “Osama bin Laden”, “Letters to America” and “Osama Letter” were met with “no results found”.
The company said yesterday that they were “proactively and aggressively” taking down videos boosting the letter written as the “content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism”. TikTok said they were also investigating on it had gone viral.
Based on an infinite series of scrolling by Sinar Daily, the TikTok trend seems to have started with a video posted by Lynnette Adkins where she told her nearly 12 million followers, “I need everyone to stop doing what they’re doing right now and go read ‘Letter to America,’ I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis right now”. Many started stitching and referring her soon after, making their own videos.
In one of her many follow-up videos, Adkins said: “TikTok is going to save this generation,” because older people are “programmed to think a certain way”.
The letter by Osama resurfaced amid the aggressive attacks by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Pro-Israeli content creators yesterday started pushing back the idea of Israeli's atrocities, arguing that the current war was a war of humility and self-defense.
In response to the issue, a White House spokesman slammed the apparent online trend in a statement, calling it an insult to the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said there was never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history – highlighting them as his direct motivation for murdering 2,977 innocent Americans.
“No one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden.
“Particularly now, at a time of rising antisemitic violence in the world, and just after Hamas terrorists carried out the worst slaughter of the Jewish people since the Holocaust in the name of the same conspiracy theories,” he said.
