Recently, Osama bin Laden’s memoir about 9/11 started making the rounds on social media. In a piece released in 2002, he explained why he felt justified in his actions. Now pro-Palestinian people started making the documents go viral on November 15th. Being heavily pushed across multiple platforms, Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-linked TikTok was the first to announce it as trending. The term #LetterToAmerica was the tag of choice and quickly spread.
Suddenly, Meta noticed this happening on Instagram and immediately silenced the hashtag. The next day both TikTok and Meta started restricting its use across all channels. According to TikTok, they consider it to support terrorism, and as such, they won’t allow it on their platform. A spokesman for TikTok spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation about the trend, as well as their decision to block the hashtag and content.
“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism. 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.”
Many who were sharing the memoir emphasized bin Laden’s viewpoints on Israel and the US and shared that they not only could see what he was saying but that they agreed with his stance on 9/11. A statement like this alone should be considered treasonous and communicating a terroristic threat. Perhaps a no-phone call visit to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could help them remember why bin Laden was wrong.
For TikTok, this paper is making the spotlight of attention shine brighter on the CCP-controlled platform. Given their pro-Palestinian stance, with all the anti-Israeli content being allowed and promoted on the platform, many have begun to seriously take issue with their existence.
One of the main sources for people to take the images from was the online publication The Guardian. Sharing images without context to them, many took the letters and shared a very different message with them. This message was misinterpreted, miscategorized, and misappropriated for a very different act of terrorism.
Clarifying the removal, the Guardian simply placed a note in its place. “This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s “letter to the American people”, which was reported on in the Observer on Sunday, 24 November 2002. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023. The transcript published on our website had been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore, we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualized it.”
It was a brilliant decision to remove the small snippet of words and ensure people see the letter with all of its context. Given a statement from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), it was clear that many refused to even try to understand the context. Instead, they simply inferred that they now could understand that terrorism was just resistance against being oppressed. That everything was happening because someone else held them down and prevented them from achieving what they deserved.
Looking at their profiles, these were people who couldn’t understand how to pour milk out of a boot with directions on the heel. Let alone comprehend the nuances surrounding terrorism and why bin Laden hated the US, or even what Palestine and Israel are fighting over. They aren’t political experts, they don’t even play one on TV. Their news sources are singularly focused and only serve to follow the leftist dribble.
To them, experiencing other cultures is going to Olive Garden, Chipotle, or Panda Express. They don’t understand the difference between a Muslim and an Arab. Simply put, they are too blissfully ignorant to learn about anything beyond the surface and overly simplified information. So when something like this memoir shows up, they think they can suddenly pick apart a massive event like 9/11 in just four pages.
Thankfully, the sheer stupidity of these posts forced their censorship. For once, Big Brother is fixing it.