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A TikTok influencer went viral this week for promoting Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America."
Online personality and pro-Palestinian activist Lynette Adkins urged her over 175,000 TikTok followers on Tuesday to read the words of the terrorist mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.
"I need everyone to stop what they're doing right now and go read- It's literally two pages. Go read 'A Letter to America," Adkins said the video. "And please come back here and just let me know what you think because I feel like I'm going through, like, an existential crisis right now and a lot of people are, so I just need someone else to be feeling this."
Her video received roughly 800,000 views and over 80,000 likes on TikTok.
TikTok personality Lynette Adkins urged her followers to read Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America."? (Screenshot/TikTok)
In the letter to the American people translated in English, bin Laden justifies al-Qaeda's attacks against the U.S. because "you attacked us" and "You attacked us in Palestine."
"Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation," bin Laden alleged.
He continued, "The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily."
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The words of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden went viral among pro-Palestinian TikTok users this week. (Stephane Ruet/Sygma)
Bin Laden wrote that it brought him "both laughter and tears" when the U.S. repeated the "fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine" and rejected the notion that believing otherwise is antisemitic.
"The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone," the terrorist leader warned, later writing "These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!!"
He later pushes the antisemitic trope claiming the Jews "control your policies, media and economy."
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There has been a surge of TikTok users who have promoted Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America." (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)
Another TikTok user raeyreads posted the entire letter on her page which received over 640,000 views despite having only 1,300 followers.
"We've been lied to our entire lives," raeyreads wrote Monday. "I remember watching people cheer when Osama was found and killed. I was a child, and it confused me. It still confuses me today. The world deserves better than what this country has done to them. Change must be made."
A TikTok spokesperson provided Fox News Digital with the following statement:
"Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism. We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform. The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate. This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media."
The Guardian, which had bin Laden's "Letter to America" published on its website since 2002 and was the first Google search result when searching for the document, quickly removed the letter amid the sudden traffic on social media.
A spokesperson for The Guardian told Fox News Digital, "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 the news article that originally contextualized it instead."
In a separate video, Adkins praised TikTok as a platform for reliable information consumption.
"TikTok is going to save this generation," Adkins said. "The amount of things that we've learned on this app in this past month alone that other people in other generations I tried to talk to them about it, they don't understand. They don't get it because they've been literally so programmed to think a certain way TikTok is undoing all of that. It's crazy to watch in real time."
"If you haven't already, go read ‘A Letter to America,’" she added.
Adkins has since released a statement that she does not agree with "extremism" or any form of hate or violence.
"I read the letter after some other creators shared it, & was surprised because I never knew it existed. I posted it to my page so others could read it as well," Adkins said in a statement to FOX News.
"I did not share the letter to promote any form of hate or violence against anyone, nor do I agree with the extremism in it. I was just shocked by what I had read & wanted to have a conversation about it with my followers. I was 3 in 2001, and was always taught 9/11 happened because other people were jealous of our democracy in the US. Now that I’m older & am able to learn about history beyond the narrative of mainstream media, I’m realizing that there is more to the story. I think we all deserve a right to access the information being presented to us & form our own conclusions without subscribing to extreme or radical ideologies."
She continued, "The letter was taken off of the Guardian’s site after being on there for over 20 years. My Tiktok was banned as of this morning, & many people who are sharing the letter are getting their videos removed as well. If we live in a true democracy, I think we should be allowed to have open & peaceful conversations about what’s happening in the world."
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