A year after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden in a document titled ‘Letter to America’ condemned the US support for Israel and accused Americans of aiding the ‘oppression’ of Palestinians. Earlier in the week, videos about the letter were posted on TikTok and X with many endorsing it
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is long done. So why is he being discussed on TikTok and X, formerly Twitter? An old letter written by the terrorist has gone viral on social media networks. The #LettertoAmerica had two million views and TikTok was forced to remove the hashtag. Several young Americans posted videos sympathising with the 9/11 conspirator. The decades-old letter is critical of the United States and its support of Israel and comes at a time when the world is divided over the ongoing conflict between the Jewish nation and Hamas. What is this letter, and how did it resurface? We take a look. What did Osama bin Laden write in his ‘Letter to America’? The letter titled “Letter to America” was written by Osama bin Laden a year after the 11 September 2001 attacks in which more than 3,000 people were killed. The transcript of the 21-year-old letter was published in The Guardian, which has now removed it from its website. In the document, the Al Qaeda chief attempted to justify the targeting and killing of American civilians in the 9/11 attacks. According to NBC News, bin Laden addressed the people of America and asked, “Why are we fighting and opposing you?… What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?” [caption id=“attachment_13398412” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]![]()
A Palestinian boy passes a mural of Osama bin Laden in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in December 2002. In the letter, the Al Qaeda chief accused the US of oppressing the Palestinian people. File photo/Reuters[/caption] Reports say that the terrorist criticised the US government’s support of Israel and accused Americans of financing the “oppression” of Palestinians. It also denounced what he described as Western “lies, immorality and debauchery”. The letter is said to be
antisemitic and filled with homophobic rhetoric. Also read: Is TikTok pushing anti-Israel content? How did the old letter resurface? Videos about the letter started recirculating on TikTok earlier this week garnering at least 14 million views by Thursday, reports CNN. The clips, which supported bin Laden’s views, urged other users to read the letter. Many of these videos were shared with the hashtag #lettertoamerica, but there were also a few who appeared to be disgusted with the popularity of the document and how it was finding sympathisers. A video posted by a New York-based influencer which encouraged others to read bin Laden’s letter had more than 1.6 million views. It can no longer be viewed on the platform. “…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,” the influencer said, according to CNN. [caption id=“attachment_13398442” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]![]()
Anti-war activists wave flags as they protest outside of the White House during a pro-Palestinian demonstration asking for a ceasefire in Gaza in Washington, on 4 November. AP[/caption] In another video with more than 100,000 views, a TikTok user, who is often critical of the US government, said, “If we’re going to call Osama bin Laden a terrorist, so is the American government.” The letter was widely discussed among left-wing creators on TikTok and later made its way to X. Journalist Yashar Ali shared a compilation of TikTok videos with a post which has been viewed more than 36 million times. “The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Many of them say that reading the letter has opened their eyes, and they’ll never see geopolitical matters the same way again,” he wrote. “Many of them — and I have watched a lot — say it has made them reevaluate their perspective on how what is often labeled as terrorism can be a legitimate form of resistance to a hostile power.”
Why are young Americans backing the letter by bin Laden? The platform is largely used by young Americans. Research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism published earlier this year found that GenZ is increasingly turning to the video app for news. A majority of Americans under 30 use the app at least once a week, according to a KFF survey. Many who use the app were born after the 9/11 attacks, according to the CNN report. This is also the social media generation which is quick to post and share videos – for them, the greatest currency is going viral irrespective of context. After The Guardian decided to bring down a copy of bin Laden’s letter, its popularity spiked. Many TikTok videos were posted after and some said that removing the piece was proof of its wisdom and importance, says a report in The Washington Post. The Post also quotes Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory who has advised Congress on online disinformation, as saying, “Don’t turn the long-public ravings of a terrorist into forbidden knowledge, something people feel excited to go rediscover… Let people read the murderer’s demands — this is the man some TikTok fools chose to glorify. Add more context.” [caption id=“attachment_13398452” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]![]()
Demonstrators march to the White House during a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington. Several young Americans want their government to stop supporting Israel. AP[/caption] While the letter is an extreme example,
young Americans are found to be more sympathetic toward Palestine than the older generation. A Harvard CAPS / Harris poll from October showed those aged 18 to 24 registered the highest level of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and pro-Hamas sentiment. On
TikTok and other social media, in the US, #StandwithPalestine is far more popular than posts supporting Israel. Also read: How the Israel-Hamas war left US campuses in an uproar What does TikTok have to say about the letter? On Thursday, TikTok said that videos promoting the letter violate its rules against “supporting any form of terrorism.” It has removed the hashtag #lettertoamerica from its search. TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said that the company was “proactively and aggressively” removing videos promoting the letter for violating the company’s rules on “supporting any form of terrorism” and said it was “investigating” how the videos got onto its platform. The company also said that the number of videos promoting the letter was “small”, adding that “reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate.” According to Haurek, #lettetoAmerica had 274 videos with 1.8 million views on Tuesday and Wednesday before “the tweets and media coverage drove people to the hashtag”. He said that compared to the letter, #travel videos had 137 million views, #skincare videos had 252 million views, and #anime videos had 611 million views during a recent 24-hour period. [caption id=“attachment_13398482” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]![]()
TikTok has removed the hashtag #lettertoamerica rom its search after bin Laden’s 2002 letter was widely shared on the platform. File photo/AP[/caption] How did the US government react? The letter comes amid a growing demand by US authorities to
ban TikTok for pushing pro-Palestine content , an accusation denied by the company. A White House spokesman slammed the “trend”, calling it an insult to victims of the 9/11 attacks. “There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement on Thursday.
“…No one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden… Particularly now, at a time of rising antisemitic violence in the world, and just after Hamas terrorists carried out the worst slaughter of the Jewish people since the Holocaust in the name of the same conspiracy theories,” it added. With inputs from agencies
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