Osama bin Laden sits with his adviser Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian linked to the al Qaeda network, during an interview with Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir (not pictured) in an image supplied by Dawn newspaper November 10, 2001. Hamid Mir/Editor/Ausaf Newspaper for Daily Dawn/Handout via REUTERS
It should not come as a surprise that many young people posted Osama Bin Laden’s “Letter To America” on TikTok and praised him.
The first reason is that on social media, people are rewarded by posting things that are controversial. Facts and morality don’t matter. Second, the entire American educational system, especially colleges, don’t teach the truth about the September 11 attacks and the anti-Western and jihadist mentality that fueled them.
If one simply uses Google to do some research for five minutes, it is clear that Osama Bin Laden was furious that American troops defended Saudi Arabia. He issued a fatwa, or edict, against America in 1996, literally called “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.” Israel was not a focus.
If his primary problem was with Israel, one would have thought he would try to attack there. Instead, his attacks were on American embassies in East Africa in 1998, the USS Cole in Yemen, and the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and one other target that was missed when passengers overtook United Flight 93 on that Tuesday morning.
Almost all Americans used to be united against Bin Laden.
But now, as it has become cool and “sophisticated” to justify terrorism, antisemitism, and hate in America — and because professors teach hateful and false narratives with no repercussions — we should not be surprised to see this hatred spread online.
It’s good to question things. But when young people believe there is no such thing as facts, it’s a problem. Without such a foundation, everything crumbles. Many today are useful idiots that justify evil. In an America where young people are taught to view all police officers as evil, and American soldiers as evil, this is a logical next step.
Many of those who posted about Bin Laden’s letter in a positive way will most assuredly say they are being silenced. But the opposite is happening.
Many people and organizations on social media profit more from lies than they do from the truth. This is why many podcasts feature various conspiracies that have no factual support. The idea that people know the “real” truth, and that the conventional wisdom is wrong, is quite attractive to people.
We live in an age where no one does any research or independently verifies facts. We live in an age where young people no longer possess critical thinking skills — the ability to analyze competing information, and decide what they think is more accurate.
We live in a world where people are posting that the Hamas attack of October 7 was a lie, despite video evidence filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves. And it’s more than TikTok. On Instagram, there is a video claiming that the world misses Saddam Hussein, the brutal Iraqi dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people.
There is also a failure of parents not educating their children, but many also have no idea what their children are posting. Young people are addicted to social media. Parents are often ambivalent or helpless to stop it.
Many of the people spreading hate online use the phrase “my truth,” and end the inquiry at that.
I’d like to see a bank robber tell a judge “my truth is that I didn’t rob the bank.” It wouldn’t work — or would it? It’s hard to tell, but most of these bank robbers would still go to jail.
Yet for some reason, it is acceptable for people to use the phrase “my truth” when vilifying Israel, America, and many other things. They should change it to, “my lie.”
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post TikTok Bin Laden Craze Shows Facts Are Not Important, and Jew-Hating Is Cool first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
