WASHINGTON, DC: A wave of furious outrage has sparked after Osama bin Laden’s two-decade-old “Letter to America” resurfaced on the internet, with several TikTok users sympathizing with the al Qaeda leader and questioning US foreign policies.
The lengthy two-page letter was first published by the Guardian newspaper in 2002 a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people and left many others gravely injured.
In the letter, Bin Laden attempted to justify the targeting and killing of American civilians while criticizing US military bases in the Middle East and the government’s support for Israel.
The Al Qaeda leader, who was killed in a US special operation in Pakistan in 2011, also used antisemitic language and homophobic rhetoric in the letter.
Nearly 21 years later, the virality of the letter reignited criticism after it began to recirculate this week on the social media platform, and videos on the topic garnered at least 14 million views by Thursday, November 16.
Videos that encouraged other users to read the letter and backed some of Bin Laden's claims were widely circulated in opposition to US assistance for Israel in its continuing conflict with Hamas.
Gen Z tiktokers sympathies with Bin Laden’s letter
The #lettertoamerica hashtag on TikTok has already garnered 13.7 million views as of Thursday afternoon while X, the platform formally known as Twitter, also saw more than 82,000 posts related to the documents.
In a now-deleted video that had received over 1.6 million views, a New York-based lifestyle influencer encouraged others to read the letter, saying “If you have read it, let me know if you are also going through an existential crisis in this very moment, because in the last 20 minutes, my entire viewpoint on the entire life I have believed, and I have lived, has changed.”
A third video, which garnered nearly 100,000 likes, showed a TikTok user at her kitchen sink with the caption: “Trying to go back to life as normal after reading Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ and realizing everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.”
In a video with more than 60,000 views, another user said the letter showed her that America was a “plague on the entire world,” according to the NY Times.
TikTok has now blocked “Letter to America” from within its search function, with a spokesperson saying that videos featuring the letter violate the platform’s community guidelines.
"We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform. The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate. This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media,” the platform said in a statement.
Internet outraged as Osama bin Laden's letter resurfaces
After Bin Laden’s letter resurfaced on the internet, several users denounced the apparent online trend while slamming Tiktokers who are encouraging others to read it.
“TikTok is the weaponization of information. America just doesn't realize it yet,” one user said. “This is so wild. Can somebody tell me where we went wrong when we in 2023 sympathize with Bin Ladin? What is going on?!?!” a second user said.
“Wow ! People went quickly from praising Hitler to praising Bin Laden ! It’s next level cooked ! End of humanity is near !” a third user said, while a fourth wrote, “Tik Tok should be banned in the Us. It would suck as I use the app but lately it has been growing toxic exponentially.”
“The USA has issues, without a doubt, but it's also the best country in the world based on individual freedoms and liberties. Nowhere else in the world do citizens enjoy the same constitutional protections that we have here,” another user stated.
“I think they’re doing pretty good considering we’re like 4 generations into the feds controlling “education,” another said.
“Most of these folks on tick toc were born after the attacks. This entire generation is completely lost,” one more wrote.
