How Osama bin Laden came back to haunt America as Gen Z TikTokers make light of country's darkest day
WASHINGTON, DC: In a shocking turn of events, Osama Bin Laden’s notorious beliefs rose from death after his two-decade-old letter resurfaced on the internet, sparking debates over the United States’ foreign policies.
The letter, titled “Letter to America,” was first published by the Guardian newspaper in 2002 a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, that the al Qaeda leader orchestrated.
In the letter, Laden, who was killed in a US special operation in Pakistan in 2011, defended the attacks in New York and Washington, claiming that Jews, who he said controlled the nation's media and business, had turned Americans into “servants” of theirs.
Now nearly 21 years later, dozens of young Americans posted videos on TikTok, claiming that they viewed Laden’s letter as an awakening to America’s role in global affairs and expressed their disappointment in the United States, according to the NY Times.
Videos, highlighting the two-page document, have already garnered at least 14 million views by Thursday, November 16, with users urging others to read the letter.
How Osama Bin Laden’s letter resurfaced on TikTok
People online have used bin Laden’s letters as a Launchpad for a conversation about American foreign policy in the Middle East in the wake of the brutal Israel and Hamas war.
In a now-viral video, a TikTok user was seen combing her hair, with the caption, “When you read Osama bin Laden’s letter to America and you realize you’ve been lied to your whole entire life.”
Another 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.”
A search for #lettertoamerica early on Thursday yielded 14.2 million views. While the letter has been re-uploaded on TikTok, several videos discussing it were shared on X, formerly known as Twitter.
According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue's analysis, from Tuesday to Thursday, the number of references to bin Laden on X increased by almost 4,300%, from a little over 5,000 to over 230,000.
Meanwhile, references to “Letter to America” jumped more than 1,800%, from just over 4,800 to 100,000, with 719 million impressions across the platform.
Similar to YouTube, Google Trends shows that searches for bin Laden increased 400% between Tuesday and Thursday. However, Instagram’s autosuggest function in search assisted users in finding “Letter to America,” listing it as a “popular search.”
White House condemns resurface of Bin Laden’s letter
Following a furious backlash, TikTok blocked “Letter to America” from within its search function, with a spokesperson saying that videos featuring the letter violate the platform’s community guidelines.
“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” Spokesperson Ben Rathe said, according to NBC News.
“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,” he continued.
In a statement, a White House official denounced the apparent online trend, calling it disrespectful to the 9/11 terror attack victims.
“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 – highlighting them as his direct motivation for murdering 2,977 innocent Americans,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told CNN.
“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,” Bates added.