Young Americans use TikTok to promote Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to America' that tries to justify 9/11 terror attacks

Young Americans are embracing and promoting Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America" – a document from 2002 that attempts to justify the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Osama bin Laden's letter to U.S. citizens was released just over a year after the 9/11 terror attacks that took the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans. The document from the al Qaeda leader reveals bin Laden's grievances toward Western nations' involvement in the Middle East. The radical Islamist also lambastes the United States for supporting the state of Israel.

The al Qaeda leader demands that American citizens "stop your oppression, lies, immorality, and debauchery that has spread among you."

"We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest," the letter reads.

Osama describes the U.S. as the "worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind."

The notorious terrorist leader pushes an anti-Semitic trope that the policies, media, and economy of the U.S. are controlled by Jews.

The letter attempts to justify attacking innocent American civilians because citizens voted for their elected leaders who support Israel.

"The American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies," the two-page letter reads. "Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment, and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want."

Osama adds, "Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us."

The al Qaeda founder says:

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. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates.

The U.S. Department of State previously noted that bin Laden "signed and issued a Declaration of jihad (holy war) from Afghanistan entitled, 'Message from Usama bin Laden to his Muslim Brothers in the Whole World and Especially in the Arabian Peninsula: Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques; Expel the Heretics from the Arabian Peninsula.'"

Osama also issued two fatwas against the U.S. and American citizens in 1998, ordering Muslims to "prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God."

Young Americans have been championing the document on social media despite the fact that the letter tries to justify attacks on the United States and its people.

Journalist Yashar Ali wrote on the X social media platform: "Over the past 24 hours, thousands of TikToks (at least) have been posted where people share how they just read Bin Laden’s infamous 'Letter to America,' in which he explained why he attacked the United States."

"The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds," Ali wrote in the social media post that included a compilation of TikTok videos promoting Osama's "Letter to America." "Many of them say that reading the letter has opened their eyes, and they’ll never see geopolitical matters the same way again. Many of them — and I have watched a lot — say it has made them reevaluate their perspective on how what is often labeled as terrorism can be a legitimate form of resistance to a hostile power."

The sudden resurgence of the "Letter to America" on TikTok follows the start of the Israel-Hamas war – which has sparked polarizing debate online.

Pro-Palestinian activist Lynette Adkins told her 177,000 TikTok followers, "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," Adkins said in the video. "And please come back here and just 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."

One social media influencer said, "So I just read ‘A Letter to America’ and I will never look at life the same, I will never look at this country the same."

Another TikTok user stated that they are "trying to go back to life as normal” after “realizing everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.”

One netizen claimed the terrorist document "changed my entire perspective on the American government."

A TikTok personality said a video regarding the "Letter to America" received 1.2 million views in less than 24 hours.

The #lettertoamerica hashtag had more than 13.9 million views as of Thursday, according to Forbes.

However, a TikTok spokesperson said the hashtag is not trending on the social media platform.

"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 on Thursday.

"Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism," Haurek continued. "We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform."

After the document went viral, the Guardian newspaper removed Osama's "Letter to Americans" from its website – which it had initially published in 2002.

"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," a spokesperson for the Guardian said.

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