The Kids Are Alright: Zoomers Put 9/11 Propaganda to Bed as Bin Laden Letter Goes Viral

For a generation that inherited a post-war golden age of utopian Americana and made it their life’s work to usher in the end-stage capitalist hellscape that is the modern United States, Boomers are awfully keen to ridicule those who came after them.

Yes, the generation that protested for civil rights and an end to the Vietnam War, only to sell the country to Ronald Reagan as soon as he dangled a dollar in front of their faces, blames America’s decline on lazy millennials and their collective proclivity for minor indulgences like artisanal coffee and avocado toast.

And so, from Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill” address, to Bill Clinton’s insistence that “there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America,” to Obama’s novel “Yes We Can” 2008 campaign, we younger folk have been indoctrinated both with the belief that we’re blessed to have been born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and that its seemingly irreversible deterioration over the course of our lifetimes is just our lying eyes playing tricks on us. If only we studied longer (for thousands of dollars a semester) and worked harder (for wages that haven’t come close to matching inflation), we’d understand just how lucky we are to be Americans.

Now, to be fair, we’re all to some extent the product of our environment. And so I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect previous generations to red pill themselves out of the free market Matrix; if my prime earnings years coincided with a once in a lifetime tech boom, I can’t promise I wouldn’t harbor a certain resentment for underemployed basement-dwelling student debtors.

But there’s one piece of jingoistic sloganeering that I thought - until this week at least - we all agreed belongs in the ash heap of history: They Hate Us For Our Freedom.

The phrase is not exactly or directly attributable to any one person. In a September 20, 2001 address, George W. Bush said, “They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” This is the quote that cemented in us the belief that Muslim terrorists had no legitimate earthly grievances against American and Western powers, but that their violent outbursts were only motivated by religious zealousness and envy for how happy and “free” we are here in the Red, White, and Blue.

But last week, a certain document began trending online which seemed to complicate the narrative. It was Osama Bin Laden’s open letter to America published in 2002. In it, he begins:

While seeking Allah's help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:

(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

He then continues to cite Palestine as a literal "Exhibit A” of Western assaults on the Muslim world:

a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) 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. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals.

Later on in the 3,000+ word screed, he states more broadly:

Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.

The letter quickly became the subject of so many TikTok videos that the platform was pressured into censoring posts describing its impact on those who read it.

“I am ashamed to say I not only have never read this letter, but I didn’t even know this letter existed. It’s wild, and everyone should read it,” said one creator, “However, be forewarned: this has left me very disillusioned…I have entered into another timeline.”

In the same montage (linked above), another user proclaims, “I will never look at this country the same.”

I will never look at this country the same.

That sentiment has spread like wildfire among young people since October 7th and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza. Having been born in the years straddling 2001 and therefore too young to fully comprehend the barbarism of America’s response to 9/11 as it was happening, millions of Millennials and Zoomers are grasping for the first time the horrors its government is willing to unleash as they witness Biden’s support for what is clearly ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Just as their life experience as the first generation in American history to be poorer than the one that preceded them has unmasked the lies they were told about “economic opportunity” and “upward mobility,” Bin Laden’s own words have revealed to them the emptiness of “American greatness” and our juvenile explanations for “Why They Hate Us.”

Of course, the minute any pillar of establishment orthodoxy starts to collapse is the minute the establishment turns to censorship to enforce it. Be it COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine War, or January 6th - as soon as we plebs start questioning what we’ve been told to believe, we’re ordered to immediately stop thinking for ourselves.

In this most recent example, narrative managers from conservative commentator Megyn Kelly to progressive Congressman Ro Khanna have condemned and ridiculed those who took Bin Laden’s words to heart. Kelly called them “weak, pathetic souls” who had been failed by their parents. Khanna lambasted them as “horrifically anti-American” and “plain out stupid.”

Yes - according to Khanna, plain out stupid are those who seek to further their understanding of what actually provoked the most consequential geopolitical event in modern history, by reading the exact words of the man who claims responsibility for said event. Far less stupid, we’re told, would be to accept the government’s insistence that it was our MTV and 2-for-1 frozen margaritas that drove him to it.

That such idiocy was ever taken seriously is an indictment of those who absorbed it. Young Americans should be applauded, not chastised and derided, for taking it upon themselves to undergo such rapid and dramatic deprogramming. The Bin Laden letter is just one of many findings in the Pandora’s Box that is the Israel-Palestine conflict. They’ll all be discovered in due time. The Zoomer enlightenment has only just begun, and so has the establishment’s meltdown in response.