“Mostly peaceful” protesters descended on the Democratic National Committee's headquarters last night demanding a cease-fire in Gaza.
While video footage played on cable news of police officers desperately shielding the entryways from the unruly mob, journalist Yashar Ali highlighted a disturbing social media trend infecting TikTok and other sites.
In the last day or so, thousands of videos have appeared online showing people swooning over Osama Bin Laden's “Letter to America,” his written justification for 9/11 released one year after al-Qaeda's heinous attack.
The Guardian was even forced to take down a 21-year-old article with the full text of the infamous letter after a link to the webpage began to go viral.
Last night, Rolling Stone magazine covered the online trend that is still in its infancy:
“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.”
Many people have mentioned that they now have a better understanding of things after reading Bin Laden's words. Especially, it seems, his take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Rolling Stone continued:
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.”
Bin Laden expounded further about how the oppression of Palestine had to be “revenged,” going on to impugn Western imperialism and hegemony in broader terms, before shifting into a justification for killing civilians in his jihad. “The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq,” he wrote. “This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.”
Here's American University's own Lynette Adkins praising a man who was intent on annihilating Western civilization.
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