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1 year ago
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A vile letter written by the warlord behind the 9/11 atrocities has gone viral on TikTok with users saying that reading it has led to them 'understanding' as to why the horrific attacks were carried out in 2001.
Osama bin Laden, who founded terror group Al-Qaeda with the aim of waging holy war on the western world, wrote a 'Letter to America' in 2002 to defend the motivation behind his murderous attack on mainland America that killed thousands of innocent people.
In the viral letter, bin Laden regularly spews anti-American, anti-Semitic and anti-Western viewpoints, citing one of the main reasons for 9/11 being the US support for Israel
At the time of writing, videos with the hashtag 'LettertoAmerica' have been viewed 7.3 million times. Extraordinarily the majority are claiming support for the twisted reasoning Bin Laden lays out without a thought for the freedoms he criticizes.
The letter began to gain traction online after UK newspaper The Guardian linked to a 2002 article which translated it in full in an article about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
It was subsequently deleted with the outlet telling DailyMail.com in a statement that it was removed because it was being shared 'without its original context.' The letter continued to spread on X but was deleted from spreading on Reddit.
The Guardian did not explain further as to how the link 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 spread with hundreds of TikTokers posting videos in response to reading it in which they appear to confuse the hateful diatribe for an intellectual think piece.
In the 'Letter to America,' Osama bin Laden accused the US of being complicity in the 'oppression' of Palestinians and of spreading AIDS throughout the world
The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins who posted a video on November 14 telling her followers to read the manifesto
At bin Laden's direction, nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11 in New York City, Washington DC and Pennsylvania
Smoke still rises from ground zero of the collapsed World Trade Center two days after the attack
Clare Baron lays a rose for her cousin Mark Whitford at the National September 11 Memorial during an annual ceremony to commemorate the 22nd anniversary
Family members of victims attend a ceremony observing the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the Pentagon
A poignant memorial for the victims of Osama bin Laden's atrocity in downtown Manhattan
The letter was originally posted with an article explaining that the original version was in Arabic in a website used by al-Qaeda to 'disseminate messages and 'was sent to hundreds of subscribers to an email list run by Mohammed al-Massari, the UK-based Saudi Arabian dissident.'
The message added that the US government was included on the list.
The various trending videos about the letter include no context around bin Laden's life as a jihadist in which his followers slaughtered thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims alike or his support for some of the most oppressive political regimes imaginable.
In other sections of his correspondence, bin Laden blames the US government for spreading AIDS throughout the world, described homosexuality as 'immoral' and sought to turn America into an oppressive religious state similar to Afghanistan.
The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins who posted a video on November 14. 'I need everyone to stop what they're doing right now and go read - it's literally two pages - go read "A Letter to America,"' she said.
In his infamous letter, Bin Laden ranted that the treatment of Palestinian people had to be 'revenged' and expressed justifications for 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.
'The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq,' bin Laden wrote.
For this reason, the Saudi Arabian terrorist wrote, all Americans and Jewish people were culpable for 'the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against [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 policies, media and economy.'
In response to the letter going viral, Florida Senator Marco Rubio mocked the TikTok users in a post on X.
'Now trending on social media (especially TikTok) people saying that after reading bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America,’ they now understand terrorism is a legitimate method of resistance against ‘oppression’ and America deserved to be attacked of 9/11,' the one-time presidential candidate wrote.
Meanwhile, The Guardian said in a statement on the removal of the letter: '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 contextualized it instead.'
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 vet, salutes at the North pool of the 9/11 Memorial
Hundreds of members of Generation Z posted videos in which they seemingly confused the hateful diatribe for an intellectual think piece
How terrorist Osama Bin Laden was a mass murderer who masterminded 9/11 murdering 2977 people
Osama bin Laden was the 17th of 52 children born into an extremely wealthy family in Saudi Arabia.
Around 1979, he became radicalized as he joined the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to repel the Soviet Union's invasion.
In 1988, he founded his terror network al Qaeda or The Base. The goal of the group was to wage holy war against the western world.
Bin Laden largely turned his hatred towards the US in the early 1990s during the first Gulf War as American troops are stationed close to holy sites in Saudi Arabia.
Between 1992 and 2001, bin Laden supported various strikes against the US military in Africa and Middle East. During his period, he was expelled from his homeland and took refuge in Afghanistan.
On September 11, 2001, 19 al Qaeda members carry out a series of attacks in the US, flying planes into various buildings, including the twin towers in New York City.
Shortly after the devastation of 9/11, bin Laden is named as the prime suspect by US authorities. The US military overruns Afghanistan but he remains on the run.
Despite multiple rumors that he died in the intervening years due to a years long battle with kidney disease, bin Laden is finally tracked down to 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 was given an Islamist funeral and buried at sea.
The Guardian website page that previously hosted the letter in full now displays a message reading: '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 viral TikTok post on the article's removal said that it was a prime example of 'narrative control.'
'Narrative control and censorship are not things you do to a society you want being able to deeply consider the things happening around them,' the user said.
The letter's reemergence after all these years comes as Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu refutes allegations that the military has committed war crimes in Gaza with reports that the death toll in the region has surpassed 11,000.
The region has been embroiled in conflict since Hamas brutally invaded Israel on October 7, killing around 1,400 people.
'Come back here and let me know what you think. Because I feel like I’m going through like an existential crisis right now, and a lot of people are. So I just need someone else to be feeling this too.' That video prompted more than 5,000 replies.
'Just read it... my eyes have been opened,' one person responded. 'I think this has made a lot of people realize that even 'villains' can speak the truth,' another wrote.
'We’ve been lied to our entire lives, I remember watching people cheer 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.
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 is going to save this generation.' Her reasoning 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 a Los Angeles Times feature.
In another video, Adkins recommends her followers watch three documentary films, including one, Out of Shadows, which prompted one reviewer to remark: 'The so-called documentary is merely a mask for a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories associated with QAnon and its linear ancestor, Pizzagate.'
Another movie promotes 9/11 conspiracy theories, including one that suggest the US was behind the attack.
In her latest post, Adkins said that 'America is losing the PR war bad' and that 'they' were trying to shut TikTok down.
English (US)