Osama bin Laden’s 21-yr-old letter goes viral after TikTok influencers promote it, netizens say 'eyes opened'

“Letter to America”, a two-decade-old letter written by the lateterrorist Osama bin Laden,is going viral online after some TikTok influencers claimed that the missive provides clues to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and that it can be read to make sense of the current world order.

Many TikTok influencers started sharing the text from the British news outlet ‘The Guardian’, which had published the two-page document in 2002 containing his ideological standing and explanation over what led him to engineer the 9/11 terror attacks.

Osama's statement on 9/11 attacks gaining traction

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Among the major takeaways of the 21-year incendiary document, bin Laden’s statement that the 9/11 attacks happened because of America’s support of Israel caught everyone’s attention.

“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.

Letter read by millions of users

The TikTok trend gained traction after an influencer, Lynnette Adkins, posted a short video on the social media platform in which she can be heard telling 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.”

The responses to her videos ranged from a user saying that their “eyes have been opened,” to another user claiming, “We’ve been lied to our entire lives, I remember watching people cheer when Osama was found and killed.”

Guardian removes article

After the letter went viral, The Guardian removed the original letter from its site.

Now, when a user opens the particular link, they are greeted with a message which reads, “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.”

Netizens question move

Many netizens shared the screenshot of the website on social media X and questioned the British daily’s decision to take down the article.

A user wrote, “It's incredibly odd for to me that ‘A Letter to America’ penned by bin Laden was removed from The Guardian today. This letter was printed on their site in 2002 and removed after TikTokers started to examine it due to his mention of Israel and Palestine.”

Another user asked why the letter was removed from the site and wrote, “Letter to America is trending, so I went to pull it up. The guardian just removed the document. Osama bin Laden’s letter to America starts trending on Twitter, and The Guardian immediately removes it from their archive?”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the UK outlet told TheWrap, “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 thenews article that originally contextualised it instead.”

(With inputs from agencies)