Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” inciting revenge against the Palestinian people and denouncing American support for Israel, went viral on social media. The openly anti-Semitic and out-of-context words of the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks are being shared on TikTok and X in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war.
Published on: November 17, 2023 – 11:40 p.m
4 mins
Twenty-one years later, a letter from Osama bin Laden resurfaces. The “Letter to America,” published on the website of the British newspaper The Guardian in 2002, resurfaced on social networks, mainly TikTok, in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war. In an openly anti-Semitic text, the former leader of al-Qaeda justifies the attacks of September 11, 2001, while condemning American support for Israel and demanding revenge on the Palestinian people.
Although the document was removed from the Guardian’s website on Wednesday, it is circulating on social media, where several videos are being shared that take the letter out of context and encourage other users to read it. Several Internet users exclaimed that “everyone should read it” because it was “illuminating” and it led them to an “existential crisis.”
Rehabilitation of Bin Laden in the networks
Within days, the text was massively shared by TikTok users who filmed themselves reacting to the letter by drawing parallels to Palestinian news. “My perspective on my entire life and what I believed in just changed,” says a TikTok user followed by 1.1 million people. “Everything is finally becoming known. “Bin Laden explains that what is currently happening in Palestine has been written for decades,” reacts another woman in a video that has been viewed more than 600,000 times. Others go even further, claiming that bin Laden “was right” or that the actions of September 11 were “only the result of the U.S. government’s failures toward other nations.”
Although the phenomenon appears to have gained momentum on the Chinese platform, the letter has already been mentioned several times on X (formerly Twitter) since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began. On October 29, the Shepherd of Truth report, influential in the conspiracy and pro-Russian sphere, published the letter saying: “Letter from Osama bin Laden to America explaining why he attacked the Jews… me mean the United States.” States of America. » The publication, which is still online at this point, has been viewed more than 500,000 times.
In the last 24 hours, thousands of TikToks (at least) have been posted in which people talk about how they just read bin Laden’s infamous “Letter to America,” in which he explained why he attacked the United States.
The TikToks come from people of all ages, races, ethnicities and… pic.twitter.com/EwjiGtFEE3
– Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 16, 2023
Fourth most popular article
The letter sharply criticizes American foreign policy, justifies the 2001 attacks with US support for Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinian territories and, among other things, accuses America of spreading AIDS, “a satanic invention of the USA.” The Guardian published an English translation in 2002 along with an article explaining how the letter came to be circulated among “British Islamic extremists.”
Although the British newspaper deleted the letter on Wednesday, November 15, the first page, now titled “Deleted: Document,” became the fourth most-viewed article on the site. “This transcript posted on our website was widely shared on social media without full context. We have therefore decided to remove it and instead redirect our readers to the article that originally contextualized it,” specifies the newspaper. Some users were offended and denounced “censorship”.
Kamel Kadja, specialist on US-Saudi relations, recalls that this letter largely used the Palestinian issue to justify the attacks. “The Palestinian issue was not a priority for al-Qaeda, the priority was to overthrow the Arab regimes. Sometimes it was used to rally Arab public opinion against governments they considered godless or apostate,” he explains to Amélie Beaucour for RFI.
The White House reacts
TikTok, in turn, says it is “proactively and aggressively” removing videos for violating rules about “supporting any form of terrorism” and says it is investigating how the content ended up on the platform. The social network says the now-removed hashtag #lettertoamerica was associated with 274 videos that were viewed 1.8 million times on Tuesday and Wednesday before “tweets and media coverage prompted people to use the hashtag.” the number increased to 13 million views.
Does anyone remember the NyQuil Chicken Challenge? It only gained attention when the media created a moral panic.
As @broderick Notes, the thread below, and media attention have led people to engage with these hashtags. From November 14th to 15th (before tweets and media coverage) the hashtag… https://t.co/HhTN3V9Q8R
— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) November 16, 2023
The distribution of this document even triggered a reaction in the White House. His spokesman, Andrew Bates, said Thursday that “there is no justification for spreading the vile, vicious, anti-Semitic lies expressed by the al-Qaeda leader shortly after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history,” United presented them as his direct motivation for the murder of 2,977 innocent Americans.”