Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that The Guardian took down infamous Osama Bin Laden ‘Letter To America’ from its website after TikTok content creators agree with Bin Laden.
As a famous @dril tweet noted of the terrorist group ISIS, “You do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them.’” Yet amid the continuing horrors of the war between Israel and Hamas militants, as people struggle to make sense of the violence and escalating rhetoric, more than a few people are willing to give al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden credit for his 2002 polemic against the United States, published as an explanation of the ideology that led him to orchestrate the attacks of 9/11.
Israel and Palestine supporters have clashed around the world in the month after the Hamas attack and Israel’s military response, including recently in Los Angeles, where a Jewish man died of the head injury he sustained during an alleged confrontation with a Palestinian proponent.
Several celebrities, including former United Nations Goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie, have called for a ceasefire in the region. “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,’” said TikTok user Lynette Adkins in a video posted to the platform on Tuesday, referring to the title often given to the text by bin Laden. “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.”
Commenters felt similarly awestruck by the document. “Just read it.. my eyes have been opened,” wrote one. “Read our entire existence for filth and he did NOT miss,” another said of bin Laden’s criticisms of the U.S. The clip itself went viral, with other young TikTokers also sharing the letter approvingly, encouraging followers to read it. “We’ve been lied to our entire lives, I remember watching people cheer when Osama was found and killed,” wrote a 25-year-old user who posted the letter in full. “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.”
The TikTok trend seems to have started with a video posted by Lynnette Adkins, in which she told her nearly 12 million followers, “I need everyone to stop doing what they’re doing right now and go read ‘Letter to America,’ I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis right now.”
Responses from fellow TikTokers include “my eyes have been opened.” Another user who shared the letter wrote, wrote, “We’ve been lied to our entire lives, I remember watching people cheer when Osama was found and killed.”
Writing a year after 9/11, bin Laden noted in his message that he was seeking to answer two questions that had occupied American media since that terrible day: “Why are we fighting and opposing you?” and “What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?” The first section is surely the most relevant to the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as it denounces the U.S. for helping to establish and maintain a Jewish state in the Palestinian territories. “The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals,” bin Laden argued. “Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.”
