A twisted letter from the mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities went viral on TikTok, with many users expressing their understanding of why the horrific attacks were carried out in 2001.
Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization dedicated to holy war against the Western world, wrote a “Letter to America” in 2002.
In the viral letter, bin Laden regularly expresses anti-American, anti-Semitic and anti-Western viewpoints and cites US support for Israel as the main reason for 9/11.
At the time of writing, videos with the hashtag “LettertoAmerica” have been viewed 7.3 million times. The letter gained increasing attention online after a link to it was included in an article about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
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.
This week, the link to the letter went viral, and hundreds of Gen Z members posted videos in response to reading it, seemingly mistaking the hateful diatribe for an intellectual thought piece.
The various trending videos center around bin Laden’s life as a jihadist, during which his followers slaughtered thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, or his support for some of the most oppressive political regimes imaginable.
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
The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins, who posted a video on November 14 urging her followers to read the manifesto
At Bin Laden’s direction, nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania on September 11th
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 – 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 regularly made anti-Semitic remarks, including suggesting that American society was infiltrated by Jewish people who “control your politics, your media and your 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 rid of “To be attacked on September 11th,” the former presidential candidate wrote.
Bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs in a raid on his compound in Pakistan in May 2011
Hundreds of Generation Z members posted videos seemingly mistaking the hateful diatribe for an intellectual thought piece
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 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’s resurfacing after all these years comes as Israeli President Benjmain Netanyahu rejects allegations that the military committed war crimes in Gaza, with reports that the death toll in the region has exceeded 11,000.
The region has been embroiled in conflict since Hamas brutally invaded Israel on October 7, killing around 1,400 people.
“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 like that too. So I just need someone else to feel that too.” This video sparked more than 5,000 replies.
“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 child and it confused me. It still confuses me today. “The world deserves better than what this country has done to them,” another person said.
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 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 case, Adkins recommends her followers watch three documentaries, including Out of Shadows, about which one reviewer said, “The so-called documentary is merely a mask for a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories related to QAnon and its linear progenitor, Pizzagate.” ‘
In her last post, Adkins said that “America is losing the PR war badly” and that “they” were trying to shut down TikTok.