On TikTok, a more than two decade-old letter from Osama Bin Laden to the United States about the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2001 is rapidly spreading to the platform’s 1 billion users.
The memo is spreading through the viral hashtag #lettertoamerica, a reference to Bin Laden’s terrorist manifesto that calls for violence against Americans, Israelis and Jews, promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories and condemns homosexuality.
On Wednesday evening, the #lettertoamerica hashtag had just over 2 million views. At time of publication on Thursday, that had multiplied more than six-fold —to more than 13.9 million views. TikTok has denied it is trending. “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 Thursday. He added that views have increased since media reports of the trend began, which has led more people to search for them.
“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” Haurek explained. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.” (He added that the problem is not unique to TikTok. On X, formerly Twitter, “Bin Laden” was trending Thursday with “Letter to America” and “TikTok.”)
(In a former life, Emily Baker-White, an author on this story, held policy positions at Facebook and Spotify.)
Creators revisiting Bin Laden’s letter in light of the current war in Israel and Gaza say the memo has made them question whether 9/11 was, in fact, an act of terrorism. Many are pointing to the letter to suggest that the U.S. was rightly attacked on that day because the country was, according to them, an occupier and oppressor of Palestine and other Arabic countries. They also claim that one of the most accessible copies of this letter—a translation published in 2002 by The Guardian—was recently taken down to hide this narrative from people in the West.
“I just read Letter to America and I will never look at life the same, I will never look at this country the same,” creator Kiana Leroux told her more than 1 million followers in a viral video Wednesday. “My entire viewpoint on the entire life I have believed and I have lived has changed.” (The video appears to have been taken down on Thursday morning.)
“I don’t think that America took out Osama Bin Laden for 9/11—no, I really don’t,” TikTok creator Alessia Francesca told her audience in a video that has now been viewed more than 250,000 times. “They took out Osama Bin Laden because he was trying to open America’s eyes to this illegal occupation that they’re helping Israel with, of the Palestinian people, and also he’s holding America accountable for their part in this illegal occupation and un-aliving of Palestinians for decades.”
“I’m like, huge into conspiracy theories, like really, really big,” she added, alleging that 9/11 was an inside job. “I have gone down an obsessive rabbit hole of 9/11—I’ve done, like, projects on it and stuff, proving that America had something to do with it.”
When searching #lettertoamerica, the next most popular hashtag to appear is #deathtoamerica, which at time of publication had more than 11.5 million views, with top posts containing images of burning American flags.
“We should overthrow the government,” said one TikToker using that hashtag and a Palestinian flag emoji. “It would be funny if it was run by Gen Z.”
As protests, counterprotests and debates over the Israel-Gaza war sweep the world, TikTok has become a key platform for those conversations—and it continues to grow as a top destination for news. Two thirds of American teens have used the platform, according to the Pew Research Center. And as more Americans turn to TikTok for information in the midst of a war, and with a high stakes election less than a year away, concerns are intensifying about TikTok’s Chinese ownership by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance. Forbes reporting has revealed that the TikTok app has been used to surveil individual Americans, shape global discourse around polarizing political and social issues and push divisive news about the American government.
Many of the teens and young creators using TikTok had not yet been born at the time of the September 11 attacks. Brian Fishman, former director of Facebook’s team countering terrorism and dangerous organizations, told Forbes, “the ‘Letter to America’ is propaganda and these kids on TikTok have not only fallen for it; they are spreading it.”
“This story reflects both unacceptable virality of praise for a murderous terrorist and a real educational failure in the United States in how we talk about al-Qaeda, the post 9/11 era, and terrorism more generally,” Fishman said.
Terrorists “always have reasons for their violence and in most cases they can point to at least some grievances that are more widely recognized,” he said. “That doesn’t mean their violence is acceptable. But they use those grievances to justify and explain violence and murder targeting non-combatants. Bin Laden did that in spades. His organization and related jihadi groups murdered not just thousands of Americans on 9/11 but tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.”
The Guardian said the transcript published on its website in 2002 “has been widely shared on social media without the full context” and “therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualised it.”
Renee Diresta, a disinformation expert who manages research at the Stanford Internet Observatory, said Thursday on Threads that The Guardian should not have taken down the letter “just because some TikTokers made it a thing.”
“Stupid choice,” she wrote. “Don’t turn the long-public ravings of a terrorist into forbidden knowledge, something people feel excited to go rediscover. Let people read the murderer’s demands – this is the man some TikTok fools chose to glorify. Add more context.”
This story is developing…
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