Megyn Kelly on Thursday condemned the parents of young people who recently “discovered” Osama bin Laden’s defense of the Sept. 11, 2002, attacks, saying they had failed to educate their children.
Discussion about the “Letter to America” has surged on TikTok in recent days, with young people describing the message as enlightening and enlightening. Bin Laden justified the terrorist attacks by arguing that America’s support for Israel’s right to exist made Americans legitimate targets.
TikTok is working to remove the videos with the hashtag, but Kelly said the fault lies with the parents.
“To the parents of all those losers who were suddenly convinced by the crazy thoughts of the man who murdered three thousand American innocents: you have failed,” she wrote on X.
“You probably drank, marched for an L-Wing cause, and/or just ignored your kids.”
“They have failed to teach wrong from right, a proper moral code, love of country and a perspective on America’s role in the world.”
She also used her podcast to upset parents.
“Put down your damn iPhone.” Pay attention to your child. Look at your children’s lessons,” she said.
“Resign from the Women’s March, which, by the way, was completely anti-Semitic when we called for it, as many did at the time.”
“Do some parenting if you want to bother having a child, and stop indoctrinating your own children to those of you who are on the left side of this pernicious woke ideology, because that’s where it ends up.”
“I’m very excited about it. We forget 9/11. And it’s, you know, what’s going to happen? It will happen again.’
Kelly, mother of Edward, 13; daughter Yardley, 12; and son Thatcher, 9, said she was dismayed that her children – who she vowed would be kept off TikTok – “have to deal with these idiots who hate America.”
“We have lost the youth of this country so much that now, 20 years later, they look back and want to rewrite the history of Osama bin Laden, because Palestine, because colonization has been deconstructed, because there has been a mind-meld on college campuses, which has corrupted and infected “Poisoned an entire generation,” she said.
“Just a note to these idiots. Three thousand Americans died on September 11th. Thanks to Bin Laden and his evil plan, four planes were hijacked. Children as young as two and a half years old were murdered on board the plane that took the lives of innocent people who were going to work that day.
In the “Letter to America,” Osama bin Laden accused the United States of participating in the “oppression” of Palestinians and spreading AIDS throughout the world
At Bin Laden’s direction, nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania on September 11th
With barely concealed anger, Kelly said her stance was “unbelievable” and that it was a damning indictment of American society.
“Their parents have failed them, their educators have failed them, corporate America has continued to fail them, the media has continued to fail them, and it is the fight for our lives,” she said.
“If you don’t think this affects a school near you or a community near you, you haven’t been paying attention.”
The White House expressed dismay at the renewed interest in the letter.
“There is never any justification for the spread of the vile, evil and anti-Semitic lies that the leader of al-Qaeda spread in the immediate aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in American history – and highlighted them as his direct motivation for the murder of 2,977 innocent Americans.” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.
“And no one should ever insult the 2,977 American families who are still mourning their loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden.”
“Especially now, at a time of increasing anti-Semitic violence in the world and shortly after Hamas terrorists, in the name of the same conspiracy theories, carried out the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
“As President Biden said this year in memory of the Americans who lost their lives at the hands of Osama bin Laden, “It is now more important than ever that we come together” against a “rising tide of hate and extremism.”
TikTok said it would remove any content referencing the letter.
“The content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules against supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTokPolicy wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter.
“We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it ended up on our platform.”
The video-sharing platform claims the number of videos on TikTok is “low” and “reports that it is trending.” [on the] Platform is inaccurate.’
The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins, who posted a video on November 14 urging her followers to read the manifesto
Hundreds of Generation Z members posted videos seemingly mistaking the hateful diatribe for an intellectual thought piece
Two days after the attack, smoke is still rising from Ground Zero of the collapsed World Trade Center
Clare Baron lays a rose for her cousin Mark Whitford at the National September 11 Memorial as part of an annual ceremony to commemorate the 22nd anniversary
Family members of the victims attend a ceremony to observe the September 11 terrorist attacks at the Pentagon
“This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and media outlets,” the post continued.
Videos with the hashtag “LettertoAmerica” were viewed 7.3 million times.
Surprisingly, the majority claims to support bin Laden’s argument – without giving a thought to the freedoms he criticizes.
The letter began to gain traction online after the British newspaper The Guardian linked to a 2002 article in which it was fully translated in an article about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
It was subsequently deleted, with the outlet telling that it was shared “out of its original context.”
The letter continued to spread on X, but could not be shared further on Reddit.
The Guardian did not elaborate on how the connection was made between the current conflict in the Middle East and a verbatim letter from bin Laden that was more than 20 years old.
The link to the letter went viral, and hundreds of TikTokers posted videos in response to reading it, seemingly mistaking the hateful diatribe for an intellectual thinkpiece.
The letter was originally published alongside an article explaining that the original version, in Arabic, was on a website used by al-Qaeda to “spread news” and was “sent to hundreds of email subscribers.” List was sent by Mohammed al-Massari, the British-based Saudi Arabian dissident.’
The message added that the US government was included on the list.
The various trending videos accompanying the letter provide no context about bin Laden’s life as a jihadist.
In other sections of his correspondence, bin Laden blames the U.S. government for the global spread of AIDS, calls homosexuality “immoral” and seeks to turn America into a repressive religious state similar to Afghanistan.
The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins, who posted a video on November 14th.
“I want everyone to stop what they’re doing and read – it’s literally two pages – and read ‘A Letter to America,'” she said.
In his infamous letter, bin Laden railed that the treatment of the Palestinian people was “revenge” and justified the killing of civilians in the name of jihad.
Bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs in a raid on his compound in Pakistan in May 2011.
“It is the American people who pay the taxes that fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that attack and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies that occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the Fleets that ensure the blockade of Iraq,” bin Laden wrote.
For this reason, the Saudi terrorist wrote, all Americans and Jews are responsible for “the crimes that Americans and Jews have committed against them.” [Muslims].’
Bin Laden wrote that AIDS was a “Satanic American invention” and repeatedly made anti-Semitic remarks, including suggesting that American society was infiltrated by Jewish people who “control your politics, media and economy.”
In response to the letter going viral, Florida Senator Marco Rubio mocked TikTok users in a post on X.
“On social media (particularly on TikTok), people are now saying that after reading Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ they now understand that terrorism is a legitimate method of resistance to ‘oppression’ and that America deserves to be on “Being attacked on 9/11,” he wrote Rubio.
Meanwhile, in a statement about the letter’s removal, The Guardian said: “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago was widely shared on social media without full context.”
“Therefore, we decided to remove it and instead direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it.”
The page that greets users who google: Osama bin Laden letter
Bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs in a raid on his compound in Pakistan in May 2011
New York City Police Officer Danny Shea, a military veteran, salutes at the north basin of the 9/11 Memorial
How terrorist Osama Bin Laden was a mass murderer who orchestrated September 11, 2001, murdering 2,977 people
Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, the 17th of 52 children of an extremely wealthy family.
He became radicalized around 1979 when he joined the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to repel the invasion of the Soviet Union.
In 1988 he founded his terrorist network Al-Qaeda or The Base. The group’s goal was to wage a holy war against the Western world.
Bin Laden largely directed his hatred toward the United States in the early 1990s during the first Gulf War, when American troops were stationed near holy sites in Saudi Arabia.
Between 1992 and 2001, bin Laden supported various attacks against the US military in Africa and the Middle East. During his term in office, he was expelled from his homeland and fled to Afghanistan.
On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda members carried out a series of attacks in the United States, flying planes into various buildings, including the Twin Towers in New York City.
Shortly after the devastation of September 11, bin Laden was named by US authorities as a prime suspect. The US military overran Afghanistan, but he remains on the run.
Despite numerous rumors that he had since died as a result of a years-long battle with kidney disease, bin Laden was finally tracked down at a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
On May 2, 2011, the mastermind was shot dead by US Navy SEALs on the orders of President Barack Obama. He received an Islamist funeral and was buried at sea.
The page on the Guardian website that previously hosted the letter in full now displays the following message: “This page previously displayed a document containing the full text of Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the American People’ in translation, as reported in the Observer on Sunday, November 24, 2002. The document, published here on the same day, was removed on November 15, 2023.
A viral TikTok post about the article’s removal said it was a prime example of “narrative control.”
“Narrative control and censorship are not things you do to a society that you want to take a deep look at the things that are happening around them,” the user said.
The letter resurfaces after all these years as Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu rejects allegations that the military committed war crimes in Gaza. The death toll in the enclave has reportedly exceeded 11,000.
The region has been embroiled in conflict since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people.
One TikToker said, “Come back and tell me what you think.” Because I feel like I’m in an existential crisis right now, and a lot of people are too.
“So I just need someone else to feel it too.”
This video sparked more than 5,000 responses.
“Just read it… my eyes were opened,” one person replied.
“I think this made a lot of people realize that even ‘bad guys’ can tell the truth,” wrote another.
“We have been lied to our whole lives. I remember seeing people cheering when Osama was found and killed.”
“I was a kid and it confused me. It still confuses me today. “The world deserves better than what this country has done to them,” another person said.
On her TikTok bio page, Lynette Adkins has a link to a fundraising page for Palestinian Rights.
Adkins followed up her original post with several others. In one, she celebrates TikTok’s influence on America’s youth.
“TikTok will save this generation.”
Their argument is that older people are “programmed to think in a certain way.”
In September 2023, Adkins’ meteoric rise from lowly Amazon employee to influencer was the subject of an article in the Los Angeles Times.
In another video, Adkins recommends her followers watch three documentaries, including Out of Shadows, which prompted one reviewer to comment, “The so-called documentary is merely a mask for a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories related to QAnon and its linear progenitor.” ‘Pizzagate.’
Another film promotes 9/11 conspiracy theories, including one that suggests the United States was behind the attack.
In her last post, Adkins said that “America is losing the PR war badly” and that “they” were trying to shut down TikTok.