Main Edition
US
FR
November 17, 2023 - 7:00am
This week, the internet was horrified to discover that Osama bin Laden’s “Letter To America” had gone viral on TikTok. The letter, which has now been removed from the Guardian‘s website, outlines bin Laden’s justification for his hostility towards America — and TikTokers, by and large, have sympathised with his reasoning. In response, critics are now sounding the alarm bell: TikTok is a Chinese propaganda tool that is “brainwashing” Americans and which must be banned.
The manner in which young people online have been talking about the re-discovery of bin Laden’s letter suggests they think this is something new. If we’re to believe the likes of Chaya Raichik of @LibsofTikTok or Yashar Ali, we’re raising a new batch of anti-American far-Left extremists. But this is not a problem unique to Gen Z or TikTok: take this stand-up clip from 2002 by popular comedian David Cross. Here, Cross doesn’t explicitly support bin Laden, but questions the American response to the attack. He says, “I think [bin Laden] did [9/11] because of our support for Israel […] you know why I think that? Because that’s what he fucking said. […] Are we a nation of six-year-olds? Answer: yes.”
This isn’t the first time Americans have had this type of “awakening” about their country’s involvement in foreign conflicts, whether rooted in truth or not. Arguably, these insights have been a hallmark of American counterculture for at least 60 years. The most simplified version is that when there’s political and social upheaval, there’s a significant anti-authoritarian contingent, and sometimes that impulse expresses itself in explicit support for the enemies of the US. During anti-war protests in the late Sixties, activists even held up Viet Cong flags, while it’s not difficult to recall the popularity of Che Guevara T-shirts, Stalin posters, and Mao Zedong throw pillows.
It may feel like bin Laden is a special case — and indeed he is — but he’s a more contested figure than one might assume. A similar relationship also emerged with Isil. Hence @dril’s famous viral tweet, which has since become a common online refrain: “[…] regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’.” It was a provocative joke, but it also revealed something about the way politically countercultural young people were talking about militant groups. Nuanced, legitimate criticisms of political intervention were, in the online arena, becoming reduced to what looked like terrorist apologia.
A little earlier, there were also Twitter’s Isis brides and American and UK-born jihadists who had been radicalised online in the early 2010s. Those stories were true — and shocking — but they were extreme examples of how online culture can influence young and malleable minds. People were rightfully disturbed by the Islamist converts who were willing to sacrifice their lives, but this was also happening in a climate where people were sympathetic to why these groups emerged. Understanding the complicated responses to violence is one thing, but it’s a bit trickier in an online climate where context notoriously collapses.
Perhaps it’s because we rarely have the opportunity to learn about the complexity of these events. So few people have the historical background or ethical toolkit to understand the reality of war or the predictable reactions to it. This isn’t an appeal to either side, but rather an acknowledgment that informed people — no matter where they’re standing — are woefully rare.
Katherine Dee is a writer. To read more of her work, visit defaultfriend.substack.com.
default_friend
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe“So few people have the historical background or ethical toolkit to understand the reality of war or the predictable reactions to it. This isn’t an appeal to either side, but rather an acknowledgment that informed people… are woefully rare.”
This feels like a significant point… recognizing that people’s moral intuitions differ, that one’s feelings do not alone provide moral justification for behavior. Rather, it appears that people require education via “ethical toolkit” to form the ‘right’ response to moral questions (including issues of violence, hatred, terrorism, etc.). That is, ‘moral intuitions’ are *not* universally shared and obvious to all adults. If this is true, who decides what that education and toolkit should have in it?
This points to another uncomfortable fact… “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” not matter how loudly it trumpets diversity. A society must have a common culture of at least certain basic norms and ideals for that society to flourish and advance the well-being of its citizens. (And of course, perhaps some norms and ideals are better than others, but that’s a different point.) And the West no longer has a ‘common culture.’ So how can we go about getting one?
Perhaps the “historical background” bit is a crucial first step to rebuilding the “ethical toolkit” bit. Because much of the dismantling of the West’s common culture, has been the result of woefully one-sided potted histories taught by ideological partisans. What’s the true truth about the way women were treated in the past, about the history of slavery, about why we live under elected bodies rather than under kings? Has capitalism helped the poor or hurt it? Do we have the courage to look around and say the socialist king is too poor to have any clothes?
It could simply be that the author means “lack of life experience” when referring to an “ethical toolkit”. Said experience won’t necessarily provide a sufficient framework in which to take a view once the passions of youth have started to lessen, but without it, the best or most rounded education in the world will definitely be insufficient.
The “ethical toolkit” thing jumped out for me too.When you share a basic understanding of right and wrong that spans generations, disillusionment or at least knowledge of the complexity of your country’s relationship to the world can be a good thing, especially if it inspires reform. However, in the context of an abiding climate of narcissism and nihilism, it’s a disaster. Of course the Chinese, or any rival would promote that and exploit it.
A shared understanding of right and wrong is the fundamental building block for a society. We’ve never had 100% acceptance, of course, but we don’t have anything near that today in the West. We are committing cultural suicide as a result.
Right and Wrong are ideals, and largely dependent on personal bias and opinion. Real events always possess some of each.
One begins to realise how important works such as Gibbon’s Decline and Fall and Lord Macaulay’s History, and before them Thucydides or Plutarch actually were and are in moudling the national ethic. Broad sympathy and sound judgement, it appears, are not latent or inherent in the ‘race’ but must be acquired in every generation through careful study.
David Cross got one thing right – we are a nation of six year olds. There’s no question there has long been a counter culture movement, especially in response to American aggression. I get that.
But this moment is different IMO. Children are being indoctrinated into the oppressor-oppressed narrative by our institutions. They are being taught in school that the west, white people and white adjacent people are irredeemable. They are being taught to hate their so-called oppressors.
Jews are getting smacked around the hardest right now, but it’s also women who oppose men competing in female sports. It’s also gay men who dare to question hysterical assumptions during a DEI struggle session. (Toronto principal committed suicide for this very reason)
In the past, it seemed to be young people pushing back against adults and institutions. It now seems like the adults and institutions are teaching this behaviour to children.
The more time they spend in education, the less they know.
I actually just read Osama’s letter to America to see what the fuss is about, and unless it’s just been badly translated, it’s mostly a load of incoherent meandering claptrap. It’s not entirely wrong of course: America is not a perfect superpower (as if there ever could be such a thing) and it has been guilty of major strategic mistakes. And, of course, “mistakes” is sometimes too forgiving: sometimes America is deliberately greedy and abuses its power to oppress people, both foreign and even sometimes its own people. And the reference to the corporatist bailout of the banks is actually a fair point, but since it’s a fair point most intelligent people in the West also already understood anyway, it adds nothing to the letter’s defence.
But none of this permits an Islamic extremist to pompously justify his own crimes or draw equivalence between them and America’s foreign policy. Just because America is not perfect does not eradicate the basic requirement for a nuanced understanding of complex global affairs, and the principle aim of propaganda is to make people believe simplistic and dishonest answers to complex problems. Israel is a case in point: the notion that it is an “Islamic land” is ahistoric nonsense that nobody with even a minimum grasp of history will actually take seriously: if you accept the principle of homelands and ancestral rights at all (upon which the Islamic claim to Israel itself is based), the Jews win the argument where Palestine is concerned. But of course the Israel-Palestine controversy long ago moved past any interest in historic accuracy.
Perhaps when people complain, in no uncertain terms, about other’s imperfections, it indicates a presumption of perfection, aka narcissism.
“none of this permits an Islamic extremist to pompously justify his own crimes”
Maybe those western college educated idiots who justify Osama bin Laden because of Israel, should wonder why Israelis don’t behave the same way to avenge the Jewish refugees from Arab countries in 1948, or Greeks for the Armenian genocide, or Hindus for what happened to their co religionists in Pakistan.
Nuance long left the building. The US and Israel have made serious blunders that have caused pain and misery for others, but these are fundamentally free nations that have created unprecedented wealth and prosperity for their citizens. No one is busting down the doors to migrate to Jordan or Lebanon or China or Iran or Russia. There’s a reason for that. I get why someone in Iraq or Afghanistan hates Americans, but it’s completely unhinged that people in America hate America. These people lack the intelligence and self reflection to appreciate the gift they were given when they were simply born in the west.
‘the principle aim of propaganda is to make people believe simplistic and dishonest answers to complex problems.’
That’s exactly the point I think this article is trying to make, although it could have been expressed more forcefully. The TikTok generation has been conditioned to absorb simplistic messages. They don’t know what nuance is because they’ve never been exposed to it. Everything in their experience is reduced to a 140 word tweet or an attention-seeking 30 second videoclip. It’s not surprising that anything as complex as the Israel-Palestine issue is fertile ground for knee-jerk hysterical reactions.
So much of what is happening culturally at present is reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The academically sanctioned denunciation of white people for just about every societal ill both national and international is particularly disturbing. But then there is the all the gender stuff, the absurdity of seeing some brave sportswomen having to defend biological facts in the face of an increasingly hysterical mob, the denunciation of JK Rowling etc. If left unchallenged where this will lead is not pretty at all. It would be a mistake to underestimate the power of Tik Tok on the younger generation. For many it is their only source of news and information.
Tik Tok is Chinese owned, they have their own version on which this kind of indoctrination is not allowed for an instant. Seeing the governor of California, the very capital of Woke, ordering the, unprecedented in recent times, scrubbing up of San Francisco so as to be worthy of the Chinese president really made me wonder.
Every would be dictator has known that once you have the youth on board you’ve pretty much won.
What’s worse is that unlike the cultural revolution, their we be no person like Mao to pull things back when things get out hand, even he knew when to deescalate despite his megalomania. Its all being driven by inertia and are current crop of leaders are ill-suited to do anything to stop it. The have shown them selves to be to cowardly or opportunistic to fix anything. It like a herd being driven by group think, or a forest fire, which will only end once it runs of fuel to burn.
How did Mao pull things back? Their getting out of hand was the point.
I blame the education system. Instead of picking teachers who are graduates and educated in whatever they are teaching, be it science, literature, foreign language, or whatever else, they are now run through a separate course of study specifically geared towards ‘childhood education’. Instead of a mix of scientists, artists, mathematicians, historians, economists, computer technicians, engineers, etc. teaching our children, we instead funnel everyone through the same ‘education’ curriculum. I suspect much of said curriculum is poorly disguised indoctrination into progressive ideology, but even if it isn’t, this is a terrible way to run things because it reduces the most important aspect of diversity, diversity of thought, opinion, and ideas.
Someone who decides to learn mathematics is likely to see the world and understand it very differently than someone who instead studied history, or language, or communications. Having different types of personalities with different prior experiences both in their post-secondary education and beyond that contributes to a broader range of experiences to impart to young people. Once upon a time, it was said ‘those who can’t do, teach’. Teachers came from the fields they knew, but maybe hadn’t been quite so successful at or for whatever reason became dissatisfied with their field and opted to teach instead. Not so anymore. Today, they’re all run through the same mill from a certain subset of undergraduates. We’ve industrialized the creation of new teachers, and the result is a high degree of uniformity, but in this case, uniformity is not the goal nor should it be.
This affects the children all kinds of ways, but the most obvious is they come through with a one sided view of things, that one side being whatever way the education establishment sees things. Parents can push back against it or teach their children to think independently and question the system, but they have to fight biology on top of everything else, because peer pressure is intense for young people, and for every parent that pays attention to their child’s education, there are probably several that don’t have the time or the inclination to do so. I don’t have a good solution. I’d say open the teaching profession to people who aren’t specifically taught in education, but I’m not sure that’s realistic given the degree of power teachers unions wield.
I’ve been in education for over twenty years and what you say is pretty accurate. If forced to choose, schools would rather a teacher is an ideological fit than a subject-matter expert.
Well, I was one of those rare kids who actually paid attention in class, and not just to the official curriculum. I always wanted to know the why of everything and got suspicious when the answer didn’t make logical sense. It’s almost like I was born cynical, suspicious, and slightly paranoid.
Its simple, modern leftists are moral idiots, its do to the fact they have a relativistic conception of truth and view the whole world through the simplistic and wrong victim-oppressor matrix. Combined with the fact that they suffer from moral narcissism and are quite shallow just makes it worse, the fact that they are tribal and conformist, as well lack curiosity about anything outside their interests just adds to the pile.
I don’t think people lack the opportunity to learn about the complexity of these events – I think they don’t really care.
Quite a few people, maybe more than we’re willing to admit, solely rely on others to figure out right from wrong. If they are not told what to do, they might stray into wrongdoing without thinking twice – not out of ignorance, but due to a lack of sincere concern for what is right or wrong.
That’s the only way I can understand someone like Osama bin Laden being considered a “contested figure” or the recent attacks on Israel as something that needs to be “contextualized”. I’ve mused on the latter issue more in depth, in terms of distinguishing between corrections that are necessary and regressions that are not, at https://www.mustardclementine.com/p/its-time-to-go-back-to-blending-in
I don’t think religion is the solution to this, in view of other articles on here – but reaffirming broader societal values might be.
“…reaffirming broader societal values…”
And where do these come from?
Thus the reason why you find l leftists overrepresented in office work, they crave affirmation from others, they derive their identity from being a part of a larger hole for a lack of one of their own, and they lust for power over other people for their feelings of inadequacy. As well as very risk-averse and conformist out of fear of disapproval. They are very easy to control, which is the reason why corporations and governments love those type of workers.
The CCP owns TikTok and uses it to disseminate anti-Western propaganda and foment the mental health crisis that is blighting an entire generation of children.
TikTok should be banned.
TikTok’s a thing on the internet, right?
I thought they were the orange and green sweets?
I think you mean those little minty things that came in the clear plastic box
That’s them. Can’t get the orange and green flavour in NZ, it’s a travesty!
How appropriate. Calling for “joining the discussion” right under an article celebrating taking ben Laden’s manifesto off the internet (I assume, unsuccessfully, although I’ve got a pretty good idea what was in it without searching the Dark Web.) I guess we’re just supposed to accept that it was full of vile lies that automatically pollute the brains of anyone exposed to them. Apparently the most effective attack on the general lack of context and nuance in political discussions is……wait for it….a lack of context and nuance in political discussions. 1984 was meant as a cautionary tale, not a manual.
“If we’re to believe the likes of Chaya Raichik of @LibsofTikTok or Yashar Ali, we’re raising a new batch of anti-American far-Left extremists.”
We don’t need to believe anyone else on this, we just need to look and hear with our own eyes and ears.
Because TikTok is a Chinese government Psyop that juvenile Western narcissits have lapped up?
Banned in their own country because its sole purpose is to pump out society destroying propaganda. It’s without doubt the most successful Psyop in history so fair play. Now enjoy the consequences of your own stupidity.
I prefer the Proclaimers version.