Why Osama bin Laden's viral 9/11 'Letter to America' clicked with Americans?

On TikTok, a letter sent by Osama bin Laden, the founder and first general emir of Al-Qaeda, responsible for the 9/11 horrors, has gone viral as people claim to have "understood" why the horrifying events fell out in 2001 — after reading it.

Thousands of innocent people were slaughtered in Osama bin Laden's horrific attack on the United States mainland in 2002. Bin Laden penned a "Letter to America" in 2002 to justify his motivations for starting the terror group Al-Qaeda with the intention of conducting a holy war on the West.

Bin Laden expressed anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western sentiments in the widely circulated letter, claiming that US backing for Israel was a major contributing factor to 9/11.

Videos using the hashtag "LettertoAmerica" have been seen 7.3 million times as of this writing. Unbelievably, the majority is endorsing the perverse logic that Bin Laden puts forth, disregarding the liberties he critiques.

After the UK publication Guardian posted a link to a complete translation of the letter in a 2002 article concerning the continuing Israel-Hamas war, the letter started to acquire popularity online.

After that, the publication removed it, telling DailyMail that it was being spread "without its original context." The letter was stopped from spreading on Reddit, but it kept on propagating on X.

Guardian did not elaborate on how the present Middle East crisis was connected to a more than two-decade-old, verbatim letter written by Osama bin Laden.

As word of the letter spread, hundreds of TikTokers shared videos of themselves reacting to it, perhaps mistaking the nasty tirade for a thoughtful essay.

The original version of the letter was uploaded online along with an explanation that it was sent to hundreds of members to an email list managed by Saudi Arabian dissident Mohammed al-Massari, who is living in the UK. The letter was first posted in Arabic on a website used by Al-Qaeda to "disseminate messages."

The communication also mentioned that the US government was on the roster.

The background of bin Laden's life during which his adherents massacred thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims equally, as well as his backing for some of the most repressive political regimes imaginable, is absent from the several viral videos about the letter.

In other passages of his letter, bin Laden argues that the US government is to fault for the global spread of AIDS, labels homosexuality as "immoral," and aims to transform the US into an authoritarian religious state akin to Afghanistan.

Lynette Adkins, a TikToker, seems to have begun the trend with a video she uploaded on November 14. "I demand that everyone put down their current activities and read "A Letter to America," which is only two pages long," she declared.

Bin Laden justified the death of civilians in the name of jihad and raged that the oppression of Palestinians had to be "revenged" in his infamous letter. In May 2011, US Navy SEALs raided bin Laden's compound in Pakistan and killed him.

"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," Bin Laden wrote.