On TikTok, a more than two decade-old letter from Osama Bin Laden to the United States about the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2001 is rapidly spreading to the platform’s 1 billion users.
The memo is spreading through the viral hashtag #lettertoamerica, a reference to Bin Laden’s terrorist manifesto that calls for violence against Americans, Israelis and Jews, promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories and condemns homosexuality.
On Wednesday evening, the #lettertoamerica hashtag had just over 2 million views. At time of publication on Thursday, that had multiplied more than six-fold —to more than 13.5 million views. TikTok has denied it is trending. “The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate,” spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement Thursday.
“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” Haurek explained. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.” (He added that the problem is not unique to TikTok. On X, formerly Twitter, “Bin Laden” was trending Thursday with “Letter to America” and “TikTok.”)
Creators revisiting Bin Laden’s letter in light of the current war in Israel and Gaza say the memo has made them question whether 9/11 was, in fact, an act of terrorism. Many are pointing to the letter to suggest that the U.S. was rightly attacked on that day because the country was, according to them, an occupier and oppressor of Palestine and other Arabic countries. They also claim that one of the most accessible copies of this letter—a translation published in 2002 by The Guardian—was recently taken down to hide this narrative from people in the West.
Developing …
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