A 2002 letter written by Osama bin Laden making an attempt to justify the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults he masterminded went viral on TikTok. Some customers are drawing connections between the letter and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The “Letter to America” went viral after TikTok customers started linking to a replica that was translated and revealed by The Guardian in November 2002.
The left-wing British newspaper has since eliminated the letter as a result of the web page in query now says, “the text was had been widely shared on social media without the full context.”
“Therefore we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualised it,” the web page now says.
TikTok additionally started to behave in opposition to it, however customers discovered a loophole through the use of screenshots of the letter.
The movies shared on the app have garnered over 14 million views, CNN reported, however now searches with the hashtag #lettertoamerica carry up no outcomes after TikTok stated it violates its tips.
Some TikTok customers stated the letter made them have a look at the U.S. authorities in a foul manner, particularly when bin Laden talked concerning the Palestinians and America’s assist for Israel.
In one video, the consumer says she “will never look at life the same. I will never look at this country the same,” including that she’s going by means of an existential disaster.
Bin Laden’s championing of the Palestinians was broadly dismissed on the time as a result of his al Qaeda terrorist group was primarily an enemy of Saudi Arabia, not Israel.
It turned in opposition to the U.S. and plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults and others over the stationing of American forces within the kingdom throughout the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, supposedly a Crusader defilement of the “Land of the Holy Mosques.”
The bin Laden letter tries to justify killing folks and makes direct references to the Quran.
It additionally accuses the U.S. of hypocrisy for imprisoning folks in Guantanamo Bay with out trials when the nation claims “to be the vanguards of human rights,” amongst different factors.
In a press release posted Thursday, TikTok stated, “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.”
The firm additionally stated the movies concerning the letter weren’t trending, with only some circulating on the app, and that it wasn’t only a TikTok pattern.
“The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate,” the publish stated. “This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media.”
While the letter is being seen for the primary time by the youthful generations, which comprise a lot of TikTok’s customers, members of the older generations are reacting harshly to the kids’ views on the letter.
Peter Bergen, a CNN nationwide safety analyst, advised the outlet that he finds the circulation of the letter “puzzling.”
“Most of the people were either not born or were very young children when bin Laden and 9/11 happened, so they don’t have much historical context,” he stated to CNN, including that, “there’s no proof it was written by bin Laden and some of the things that he focuses on are inconsistent with his other writings.”
Content Source: www.washingtontimes.com