The conflict between Israel and Hamas also exacerbates all plots… Latest example: a text written by Bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks of September 11, 2001, resurfaced on social networks, pushing the British daily The Guardian and the social network TikTok to take action.
The keyword “letter to America” went viral online, bringing back to life the text more than twenty years old, written by the man who had already become the public enemy of the United States. Written in Arabic before being translated into English, the text then circulated in particular in English Islamist circles. The leader of Al-Qaeda justified the attacks on American soil by the country’s foreign policy and its support for Israel, by calling for revenge on the Palestinian people.
On TikTok, many Americans have filmed themselves in front of the camera in recent days, testifying to their feelings about this letter: if voices were raised to recall the responsibility of the terrorist in the attacks which caused the death of more than 3,000 people, many called on Internet users to read the text, and several said they were going through an “existential crisis” since their discovery.
Conspiracy theories
Accessible since 2002 on the Guardian’s online site, the text was removed on Wednesday, the title preferring to refer its readers to an article from 2002 which contextualized the publication. As for the Chinese social network, it affirmed Thursday that “the content promoting this letter clearly violates [les] rules of use relating to all forms of support for terrorism”, before adding that these were in the process of being removed from the platform.
But faced with the online propagation, the reactions of TikTok and the Guardian mainly had the effect of fueling conspiracy theories on the role of the media, and of increasing the curiosity of Internet users: a classic “Streisand effect”, which tends to draw attention to a phenomenon while wanting to erase it. Many TikTok users posted videos of indignation following these two decisions, accusing the media of censorship or of wanting to hide the “truth”.
The letter, which still manages to circulate in bits and pieces on the platform, and has not been the subject of any action by X (formerly Twitter) and its owner Elon Musk, contains explicitly anti-Semitic passages on the alleged control of the community Jewish on the media and the economy. But it also finds an echo among a part of the American extreme right acquired by conspiracy theories on September 11. Some people think in particular that the attacks were not perpetrated by Islamist terrorists…
After the release of the text, the White House reacted Thursday, indicating that it would never admit “justification for the propagation of the horrible, repugnant and anti-Semitic lies that the leader of Al-Qaeda had written just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history.