Here is how Osama bin Laden’s 2002 ‘Letter to America’ went viral on social media

Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ went viral on social media, reaching millions online the other day.

• Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter To America’ goes viral amid Israel-Hamas War
• Bin Laden’s letter condemns U.S. support for Israel and accuses Americans of aiding the oppression of Palestinian people. Bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. special operation in Pakistan in 2011, also denounced U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Kashmir, Chechnya and Lebanon
• The Guardian had a copy of “Letter to America” posted, but once these TikToks went viral, the Guardian took it down that was published in November 2002.
  

After TikTok, platform X saw hashtags #LettertoAmerica and #OsamaBinLaden were among the top trending on Friday.

And here is how, an old letter from Osama Bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, who was killed in a US intelligence-based operation on May 2, 2011, in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad by United States Navy SEALs of SEAL Team Six.

It emerges that a TikTok user with 371 followers, using the screen name “_monix2,” on Monday, Nov 13, posted a video where she read parts of Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” in which the late terrorist leader said his killings of nearly 3,000 Americans in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had been justified by the United States’ support of Israel’s “occupation” of the Palestinian territories.

In two days, the post went viral and the letter had become a point of discussion among left-wing creators on the popular video app, TikTok.

Several TikTok users were discussing the letter saying its critiques of American foreign policy had opened their eyes to a history they’d never learned.

Reportedly, the platform started removing the posts that featured Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America.” Due to this, the letter did make it among TikTok’s top trends.

As reported, the videos posted with hashtags #lettertoamerica had been seen about 2 million times — a relatively low count on a wildly popular app with 150 million accounts in the United States alone.

From here the letter made it to the X-platform.

On Thursday, Journalist Yashar Ali shared a compilation of the TikTok videos in a post on X.

That post has been viewed more than 37.5M times.

By Thursday afternoon, TikTok announced it had banned the hashtag and dozens of similar variations, TikTok videos tagged #lettertoamerica had gained more than 15 million views.

 

On the other hand, by Thursday afternoon, searches for “letter to America” on Instagram were still  a “Popular” tag.

As reported, one post, a series of screenshots of the letter, had more than 10,000 likes as of Thursday afternoon.

The letter which was written in 2002 has been taken down by the source that published it after 22 years.

Following the viral posts, the top Google Search result for “Letter to America” directs to a page on the website of The Guardian, which published Laden’s letter in 2002.

Social media-driven interest in the text made it the publication’s top-trending story for a while on Wednesday, however, the outlet then removed the letter, and replaced it with a brief message:

“This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s “letter to the American people,” as reported in the Observer on Sunday 24 November 2002,” it reads.

“The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023.”

While no other explanation was offered.

 

What caused the removal of posts mentioning the Letter to America in question?

TikTok has faced criticism and calls for a ban in America due to the popularity of pro-Palestinian videos on the app compared with pro-Israel content, even though Facebook and Instagram show a similar gap.

The letter written 22 years ago, emerges having pro-Palestine content and justifiying jihad. And is clear reason for being taken down and shadowbanned on social media.

Meanwhile the certain parts of the letter that are claimed to be discussed in the viral post provided with Laden’s reasoning of 9/11 atack.

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, for sure becomes the 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 wrote, maintaining that “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 in his letter addressed to America, set forth 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.”

Hence the posts mentioning the letter in question were taken down.

In a statement posted on X-platform Thursday, TikTok said, “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.”