The Guardian Deletes Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ After It Goes Viral on TikTok

Sharon Knolle
Wed, November 15, 2023



The Guardian made the unusual move Wednesday to delete a 21-year-old letter written by Osama bin Laden from their site after several TikTokers urged followers to read the al Qaeda leader’s missive, causing “Letter to America” to go viral on the social media platform.

Guardian readers are now met with the 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. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023.”

In a statement to TheWrap, a spokesperson for the U.K. outlet said, “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.”

Among the takeaways people are discussing on TikTok: bin Laden’s statement that Sept. 11, 2001 happened because of America’s support of Israel. “They threw hundreds of thousands of soldiers against us and have formed an alliance with the Israelis to oppress us and occupy our land; that was the reason for our response on the eleventh,” the letter, which can easily be found elsewhere online, reads in part.

The TikTok trend seems to have started with a video posted by Lynnette Adkins, in which she told her nearly 12 million followers, “I need everyone to stop doing what they’re doing right now and go read ‘Letter to America,’ I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis right now.”

Responses from fellow TikTokers include “my eyes have been opened.” Another user who shared the letter wrote, wrote, “We’ve been lied to our entire lives, I remember watching people cheer when Osama was found and killed.”

In one of her many follow-up videos, Adkins says, “TikTok is going to save this generation,” because older people are “programmed to think a certain way.”

Trending searches on TikTok included “Osama letter to America summary,” “a letter to America full text” and “a letter to America explained.”

Bin Laden’s resurfaced anti-Israel message comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed allegations that the country is committing war crimes in Gaza. The latest conflict in the Middle East ignited Oct. 7 following Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israeli civilians that left more than 1,400 dead.

Israel and Palestine supporters have clashed around the world in the month after the Hamas attack and Israel’s military response, including recently in Los Angeles, where a Jewish man died of the head injury he sustained during an alleged confrontation with a Palestinian proponent.

Several celebrities, including former United Nations Goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie, have called for a ceasefire in the region.

The post The Guardian Deletes Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ After It Goes Viral on TikTok appeared first on TheWrap.

Guardian Removes Decades-Old Bin Laden Text After It Goes Viral
Corbin Bolies
Wed, November 15, 2023 

Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty

The Guardian took down on Wednesday a 2002 letter written by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, saying the version of the letter on its website that had circulated on social media in recent days needed more context. “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared today on social media without its original context,” a Guardian spokesperson told The Daily Beast in a Wednesday email. “Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.” The link housing the full letter now directs readers to a November 2002 story about the letter initially published in The Observer, the paper’s sister publication. The letter had reached the top of the Guardian’s website in recent days and had circulated on social media thanks to bin Laden’s comments on Palestine.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ Goes Viral 21 Years Later — on TikTok

Miles Klee
Wed, November 15, 2023 

osama-bin-laden-letter.jpg Osama bin Laden born March 10, 1957. member of the prominent Saudi bin Laden family and the founder of the Islamic extremist organization al-Qaeda, best known for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks again - Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty ImagesMore

As a famous @dril tweet noted of the terrorist group ISIS, “You do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them.'” Yet amid the continuing horrors of the war between Israel and Hamas militants, as people struggle to make sense of the violence and escalating rhetoric, more than a few people are willing to give al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden credit for his 2002 polemic against the United States, published as an explanation of the ideology that led him to orchestrate the attacks of 9/11.

“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.”

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.”

While some of bin Laden’s judgments would not have been out of place in mainstream American politics of the era — he takes the U.S. to task for not signing the Kyoto Protocol treaty on restricting emission of greenhouse gases, for example — the letter is also interspersed with antisemitic tropes and hate speech. He repeatedly wrote that the country was dominated by Jews who “control your policies, media and economy,” elsewhere condemning homosexuality and fornication as “immoral,” and accusing the U.S. of spreading AIDS, which he termed a “Satanic American Invention.” As for what al-Qaeda wanted, bin Laden said that the U.S. had to renounce its culture of “hypocrisy” and become an Islamic nation.

The top Google Search result for “Letter to America” directs to a page on the website of The Guardian, which published it in 2002. For a while on Wednesday, social media-driven interest in the text made it the publication’s top-trending story — but then the outlet 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.” No other explanation is offered.

The deletion prompted even more discussion on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter), where people questioned the editorial decision and asked for other links to the document. “Thankfully they can’t wipe our memories, or undo our further radicalization,” wrote an X user who said it was “no coincidence” The Guardian took the article down after it made the rounds online. “They really want us to stay ignorant,” wrote another. A third reader argued that bin Laden “was not the bad guy.” But many were shocked to see sympathy for — or agreement with — the terrorist who masterminded 9/11. “These so-called TikTok leftists praising Osama Bin Laden now?” tweeted one person in apparent disbelief. “How do you get radicalized to be ridiculous?”

If nothing else, it must be a sign of how polarized and angry Americans have become over a Middle East conflict that has already claimed thousands of lives, and the role the U.S. has played in the region for decades. You know things are dire when, for some people engaged in the debate, an extremist mass murderer starts making sense.

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