The text of an inflammatory “letter to America” from 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden has gone viral on TikTok and drawn praise from young users – and US lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are blasting the China-owned app for promoting “terrorist propaganda.”
In the letter, bin Laden claimed that he orchestrated the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center that killed nearly 3,000 Americans because the US “attacked us in Palestine.”
The terrorist also described the creation of Israel as a “crime which must be erased.”
The Guardian, which had published the full text of the letter in 2002, pulled down the letter on Wednesday, citing the fact in a statement that it was being “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 TikTok users promoting the letter was Lynette Adkins — a social-media influencer who has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times.
In the video, which has received nearly 100,000 likes and more than 5,500 comments since it was posted on Wednesday, Adkins told her followers to “stop what they’re doing right now and go read a letter to America.”
Adkins followed up with several other posts, including one in which she discussed “three movies to watch after you’ve read ‘a letter to America’” and another in which she reacted to The Guardian taking down the text and declared “America is losing the PR war bad.”
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Approved ~ MJM
