November 20, 2023 • 50 mins
Robert, Garrison, James and Mia discuss the Tiktok zoomers discovering Osama Bin Laden's Letter to the American People, Bin Laden's actual motivations, and right wing anti-imperialism
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zon Media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
There is America hit by God in one of its
softest spots. Its greatest buildings were destroyed. Thank God for that.
There is America full of fear, from its north to
its south, from its west to its east. Thank God
for that. What America is tasting now with something insignificant
to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our
nation has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for
(00:30):
more than eighty years. Its sons are killed, its blood
is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears,
and no one heeds. Those words, written by Osama bin
Laden in October seventh, two thousand and one, were part
of his first statement issued after the nine to eleven attacks.
You might notice a few things about that. One is,
(00:51):
of course, the glorying over the deaths of several thousand people.
And another is that when it comes to his analysis
of the cutrual and psychological impact of nine to eleven
on the United States, he was more or less right.
This is it could happen here A podcast about things
falling apart and nothing better embodies the slow, sometimes rapid
(01:13):
collapse of the United States. As our reaction to nine
to eleven and our continuing responses to it. And so
today I've got in the studio. We don't actually have
a studio. I've got Miya, I've got James, and I've
got Garrison, and we're going to talk about something you've
probably encountered, which is that a letter to America written
(01:34):
by osamaban Lan, which is a different piece from the
one I started this reading, but written along broadly similar lines,
has started to go viral on TikTok, and if you've
seen the reactions to it, it's a mix of a
bunch of you younger people on TikTok reading this letter
for the first time where bin Laden explains why he
did he believed nine to eleven to be justified, and
(01:55):
going wow, he has a point, some of them saying
stuff that's more unhinged than that even and then you've
got this chorus of responses from both kind of centrist
you know, media figures, cultural commentators, pundits, and of course
right wing shitheads who are all making this out to
be the left looves Osama bin Laden. We're going to
get into kind of where the truth lies in this
(02:17):
and also what is in the letter to America but yeah, welcome,
Welcome to the pod everyone.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Thanks Robert, horrible to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
How did you How did you all hear about this,
this new fun trend on the internet.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I returned from spending my evening volunteering the border in
Cucumber to find a dearth of messages about an Issama
bin laden letter or the speech that you just read
the ive a sign for probably a decade to undergraduates
without anyone losing their mind. And yeah, extremely confusing vibes
(02:53):
for me.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
The first time I heard about it was the first
post that I saw was it was only about a
million views. It wasn't even that viral, which I guess
might be true because TikTok is nuts. But yeah, I
think it. I don't know, like I first ran into
it on Twitter, and I think by the time it
hit Twitter, everyone was just sort of in about eighteen
(03:16):
directions completely losing their minds, which is yeas it is now.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, and I think probably a couple of videos of
people dying just seems to pop up every time something
discussed on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Now, I think that's an accurate description of kind of
the fallout to it. And as we're writing the or
as we're recording this. Most of these original TikTok videos,
people seem to be reading off of The Guardian's copy
of a Letter to America, which was I guess the
most easy to google prior to I think it was
just the easiest to google. When this all started rolling,
(03:49):
the Guardian took that down because they didn't want people
reading it outside of the context of the article it's in.
This was a horrible mistake. I have found a number
of comments being like, this is them. They're trying to
stop you from reading Ben Laden's words. We're all gonna
be on a watch list. They can't arrest all of us.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
You can.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You can still access the Letter to America.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's on the sentiment that you can't arrest one of
us suggested that many of these people were not alive
in the media off to moth of them will fucking try.
They did try.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Just to be very clear, you can still read this
whole letter to yourself, and so can everyone else. It's
on Wiki source. If you just google Binladen Letter to America,
it will bring up the Wikipedia page that talks about
this this letter and its context, and that will also
give you a link at somewhere at the bottom to
the wiki source. That's just the unedited translation of the
letter to the American people. So it is not like
(04:45):
the Guardian's move was bad because of they called the
Streisand principle right that if you like try to hide
something from people on the internet, it just it just
makes the problem worse. You never do what the Guardian did.
It's very dumb.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
It was explain the Guardian of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
action yeah. Sur I was gonna say, yeah, they could
have blamed trans people. I'm surprised he didn't get one
of those in there.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
They've been everyone's been trying to pivot very quickly to this.
So obviously you know, my like James, my opinions on
this are kind of complex. On one hand, I am
not an Osama bin laden Fan. He was a bad person.
He was a terrible person, and he did a lot
of damage, not just to the United States. That said,
I've also long been an advocate for like, he's probably
(05:33):
going to go down as one of the most effective
and intelligent military strategic minds of the twenty first century.
The September eleventh attacks worked in large part right because
of how we re reacted because of the amount of
money that we spent, the amount of people that we killed,
the amount of anger that we engendered against the West,
(05:55):
and the amount of damage that we did to our
own society. A lot of the fallout that we're seeing
and all these you know, right wing street gangs and shit,
a lot of it traces back to fall out from
the wars that were started by the Bush administration after
September eleventh. So and that was that was part of
the stated goal, right that was one of the things
he was looking to provoke a reaction. So I'm I'm
(06:16):
both like glad. Hopefully some people are going to come
away from this with a more nuanced understanding of the guy.
And when I say nuanced, I don't mean in a
moral sense, because it's bad to kill thousands of random people,
but in the sense of, like, oh, this was not
I think I need to play something for you guys,
because like, as a nine to eleven, like I was
like nine or ten when it happened, So I remember
(06:38):
it all very well, and I remember the reaction to it,
and I remember the propaganda we encountered. And there's this
thing that you will find written about fascists pretty regularly,
which is that they both need an all powerful enemy,
but they also need an enemy that's like fundamentally free
of virtue, and intelligence and skill are virtues. So both
(07:01):
in the wake of nine to eleven, you got this
sort of al Qaeda and you know, larger sort of
Islamist movements were considered this nefarious force as they are
now in the wake of the attacks by Hamas, right,
this nefarious force that is capable of infiltrating the US
border and seeking terrorist sales into the United States to
hit anybody. And at the same time they're like primitive
(07:21):
idiots who are bigots against who are you know, they
hate women and all this stuff, right, Like, you can't
you can't see them as capable or intelligent, because then
that would that would be to give them a virtue
that you reserve for yourself. Anyway, I think a good
example of that is this parody song by John Valby
that I encountered in a napster download when I was
a child, and it's Bin Laden.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Oh it's the other one.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Okay, Okay, yeah, this one's bad, folks. You're gonna hear
something offensive. I'm playing it now because number one, I
think it's something people should remember or no. But also
because we're about to place these TikTok responses to this
bin Laden video and reads some comments of people who
are very taken by it. And I want to set
up what the pre existing image of bin Laden was
(08:08):
and our culture kind of prior to this reappraisal of him,
because I think that is important. But this is unhinged
so and and it's pretty offensive. So just be aware people,
I'm about to play it now. Wait, oh yeah, no,
you're gonna have all right? Can you see the giant
Confederate So this is from a John Valby album. I
think it was called Real Women Do Play in Mud Puddles.
(08:30):
I don't know, maybe not. That may just be a
random image I did not check. There's like describe there's
the general lee as a mudding truck with a giant
Confederate flag behind it and then with the Confederate flag
like colors the text real women do play in mud
puddles and it's as Southern girls girl on the on
(08:51):
the windshield of the truck. So I'm gonna start playing
this song. I'm not gonna play all of it, but
this should set up for you kind of what the
acceptable discourse on Ben Laden was right after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Well, we come from Alabama, but we're in Afghanistan, Navy
Shield and.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Dreamer Rays hunting for a man.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
They say he.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Has a bearded face of diaper on his head.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
I heard we won't be coming home until that fucker's dead.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
No, don't do.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
I've come to fuck your fanny with.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Some and frax on my name.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So had you guys heard that before?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
No?
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Unfortunately?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, wow, yeah, see.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
This is the part of America but I missed growing
up abroad. Yeah, never fully understand now.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
We freezed about thirty seconds into that minute and thirty
second song, but it was like playing random clips of
art to go along with the music. And the one
we paused on was Homer Simpson with an American flag
behind him, outlined and read with a pistol in his
hands aimed at a bug eyed Osama bin Laden. So
great nuanced discourse here, so.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Many memories like I don't know what it was. People
loved that, like bug ey'd bin Luden thing. This is
like like, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Don't know what.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
No, I think I know, well, I'm pretty sure I
know why, which is that so. One of the most
popular pieces of like media popular media in response in
the nine to eleven attacks was an episode of South
Park that came out literally like a week or two
after the attacks, which basically, up until fairly recently, TV
was always made on a significant delay, so there were
(10:40):
no shows on air that could pivot to comment on
something really quickly. The West Wing managed to kind of,
but it was like a dog shit episode. But the
South Park guys really pivoted and they put out this episode.
It was basically like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Cartman
as Bugs Bunny and Osama bin Laden as Elmer Fudd, right,
and there were a bunch of like scenes of him
(11:00):
like bug eyes bugging out when like shit would happen,
and it was It was weird because like the I
think the most people who watched it, including myself, took
it in the same manner of that song as like, yeah,
fuck these guys, these like you know in ways that
we're pretty bigoted. There was also like the episode opened
with an extended bit of kids in Afghanistan with everything
(11:22):
around them and all the adults getting murdered by US
airplanes for no seeming reason, which was like part of
the anyway whatever. I think one of the was, like
what we're seeing in some of like why young people
are reacting to this letter by bin Laden so strongly
is they've never really gotten to appraise the guy objectively.
(11:44):
And I'm not saying that that's happening across the board now,
but I don't think the reactions are nearly as unreasonable
as they're being painted.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, he kind of existed an avatar of evil and
like with zero nuance or complexity, just like, yeah, a
satanic sort of totem in American culture. Yeah, which is
why I've always assigned it just like I think it
behooves us to understand.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, I agree entirely. So I went through and I
looked at some of the tiktoks being made about this,
And first off, TikTok does seem to have taken some
action to try to stop this. I don't think it's
going to work either. But like when I typed in
letter to America recently, the text I got on TikTok
was this phrase may be associated with behavior or content
(12:27):
that violates our guidelines promoting a safe, positive experiences TikTok's
top priority. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yah yah. You can still
find shit by like typing in bin Laden, but it's
it's not as much shit as findable right now, so
worth noting. One of the first things I came across
that was interesting is like, so there's this trend on TikTok.
If you're not a TikToker, I'm going to play what
(12:50):
are the people on TikTok. There's a lot of AI
videos where either the text will be read by AI
with like images and video clips on screen, or you'll
some there's some creepy instances of people just generating AI
faces sometimes of like actual murderers and criminals to talk
about the ship they did. It's really weird. But one
of the top videos I found on this from about
(13:13):
a little less than a day ago, is just the
entire text of bin Laden's letter to America being read
by an AI, and it it sounds weird. I'm going
to just let everyone get a listen to this.
Speaker 6 (13:25):
In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful,
permission to fight against disbelievers is given to those believers
who are fought against because they have been wronged. And
surely a law is able to give them believers victory.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I think it misses some of the some of the
stirring contexts.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Delivery.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
No, but you get the responses of this, and like
one of my favorite ones that I've gotten the screen
is chee cheekis Fressa saying y'all are going to hate me,
but he kind of ate.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And then the.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
First response is no crumbs, which Garrison has our gins
it's Sultan.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
That means like, I agree basically, you know, it's it's oh,
you're twenty one, now you're.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Out of touch. Yeah. Yeah, the first feeling old moment live.
Speaker 7 (14:14):
I yeah, I think that means he like ate everything
and there's like no crumbs left.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
No, oh okay, that's that's good. Very literal.
Speaker 7 (14:25):
Yeah, I think I think that's what it means. But again,
this is this is very.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Very very particular culture.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We're really here.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
It's the bleeding edge. Yeah yeah. The last comment following
that is bizarre. Trump isn't a good person either. The
gay people have nothing to do with me. This does
not say book for Trump. I think you can't read
see this is you know, it's it's and that's the.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Op responding to no crumbs. So I don't know what's
missing here.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
It's really it's really hard to tell.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, I think these people may be in a parallel reality.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
I don't think really anyone who's participating in this trend
is very intelligent or has or has very good media literacy,
or has really looked into like American imperialism very much. No,
but we will, we will, We will get to that
in this Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
So the next comment is so much truth coming out
this season. And then I appreciated this from Walker. He
lost me at the end, he being bin laden with
the religiously charged homophobia, but that left out he was
right about everything else, justified and well said, see the
voice of.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Reason, the voice. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
Well, but also also now we'll get through it. There's
a few more problems with the letter than that.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, I'm doing doing like you're doing nine to eleven,
but with a pride flag is yeah, perfect, And I
have no notes.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, you can't.
Speaker 7 (15:53):
You can't remove those things from the rest of the letter.
In the action, they actually do create a complete hole.
You can't actually pick and choose little parts that you
want it. It's like trying to pick and choose parts
of qan On. You're like, yeah, well, actually there are
rich people who are pedophiles. You're like, well, yes, but
you can't, Like you can't. That's not giving Qan on
(16:14):
The benefit here is these are totally different things.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And the thing that I think people should be doing,
just so we're clear on my stands here, is seeing
bin Laden as an incisive and intelligent actor who had
a significant degree of understanding of this country and its culture.
And the terrible things that he did were as effective
as they were because he understood things about us that
(16:39):
we should understand about us, right, Otherwise you are not
going to be able to successfully act within this culture
to improve things and reduce harms. You need to understand
why what he did worked as well as it did,
and you need to understand what he knew about us,
because it's pretty useful stuff to understand. That is different
from saying that what he is like, you don't have
(17:02):
to view it as the truth, right because it's it's
it's not like the truth in any moral sense, but
it's the truth in that like if you if you
read some of Hitler's writings on democracy, Hitler accurately understood
the vulnerabilities of a democratic system and how to exploit them.
You should understand that you're not saying, wow, he was
spitting truth. You're just saying, well, some people are, Robert.
(17:24):
That is a problem. Yeah, some people, in fact are.
Speaker 7 (17:27):
Do you know who else is spitting truth?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Robert our advertisers, Yes, that is right.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
We are.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Are we sponsored by the new predition of mine at
this point? No, we are sponsored by al Bagdati. He's
still alive, folks. Mm I don't know. I don't know.
Here here's the ads. Okay, so we're back. I'm going
(17:59):
to play another one of the one of these zoomer
Bin Laden loving videos for you. Well, no you're not, No,
I'm not.
Speaker 7 (18:10):
Lots of these videos have also been taken down recently.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I go, yeah, they which Yeah. I thought this one
was interesting because it was someone who was like really
pro bin Laden, being like, yeah, you know, he was
completely right about everything. What a genius, So I love him.
But all of the comments were people being like, that's
fucking kind of crazy to say, bro, like, yeah, let's
(18:34):
take a step back.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
So the thing this reminds me of this, this is
a phenomenon I've run into with American maoists. Yeah, we're like, okay,
they'll read MAO. They'll read MAO saying something that is,
you know, perfectly reasonable, like you should not talk about
something unless you've researched it first. Yeah. Now, any normal
person has heard this when they were like two, But
(18:58):
these people apparently have never heard this, and they run
into it through MAO and they're like, holy shit, maw
is like the greatest living theorist.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
What's a brilliant thinker?
Speaker 4 (19:07):
You guys need bid LAUNI and tell you the US
sucks like really.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Health Yes, people do because they get shit history education
because their.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Their education of nine to eleven was the video I
started this episode.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, like we failed as a country, like just completely.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
No, seriously, Like I like a fucking like horse that
I will whip till it's dead.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Is that?
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Like in twenty sixteen, there was this huge thing about
we need to teach history properly and media literacy right
after Donald Trump got elected because a lot of people
didn't know what the fuck was going on. We just
and then we just stopped, and everyone was like, nah,
fuck it, why not, We'll just keep doing stem stem
STEM and then like like teaching undergraduates often like intro
courses for years it's become very clear that we are
(19:54):
completely failing in the United States to educate people or
equip them with any understanding of a man history, and
so they just get propaganda.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
This is a big part of why I focus on
crypto so much, because James, that is exactly where crypto
comes from, is we learned a lot of stem shit,
but we never learned any humanities or anything. So you
get people saying stuff like, well, the underlying technology behind
crypto is so impressive, and it's like, no, it's you
can't point to a single useful piece of work it's
ever done. You just find it impressive because there's a
(20:25):
lot of complex math problems and that's what you that's
what you value, Like, yes.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
The resultimate, Yeah, the yodd stick of academic achievement or intelligence.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah, anyway, speaking of people who are less intelligent than
a yardstick. It's not exactly what you said, James. But
I also wanted to play here's a right wing influencer
who's collected a bunch of these videos. I hadn't run
into this guy before, but oh no, did they drop
him too? Are they just purging everything?
Speaker 7 (20:50):
So TikTok has been removing all of this. Almost all
of the videos associated with this trend you can you
can find the compilations on Twitter are really some of
the only Yeah, so these videos are still alive.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, and this is a right wing guy. This was
the right wing guy making fun of it. But man,
that's interesting because this was, like I found this five
minutes ago.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
So I mean, I think this is the thing that like,
it's really hard to talk about this without it being
in like an insane right wing thing. But TikTok is
really Americans only encounter with the way that Chinese style
censorship works, which is they take a giant hammer and
they just like hit things with it. Yeah, I supposed
like it's not it's not like targeted. It's like like
(21:30):
we found everyone who said the word bin lauded and
we band it right, everything associated with the trend, Like, yeah,
you know, like this is this is the way that
like censorship stuff tends to work in China because it's
kind of easy to do and it covers your ass.
And so now Americans are like experiencing this.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I'm sorry, I'm just enjoying seeing what Rubberts have suggested
for other tiktoks. He might like, oh, thank goodness for
the shower's top shelf products. Yeah, hashtag hadtalk.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, I'm a big fan. I think it's because of
this person, Earth earth Mother, Earth earth Mother basically who
actually I brought her up specifically because she was an
example of like the way this is getting portrayed in
kind of like particularly like Twitter and more mainstream sort
(22:18):
of descriptions of it is like all of these gen
zers are full throat for Osamo. They've all gone crazy,
and you can certainly find no shortage of those videos.
I found a bunch of other videos that are more critical.
It is difficult for me to tell what the preponderance
of is because there's not no one's basing what they're
saying on a sentiment analysis. They're basing it on what
(22:38):
their timelines forwarded them based on their passionate when they
typed letter to America or whatever into Twitter or into
a TikTok. But like I ran into this lady's video
and like so not plenty of these are and I
found others like this. Plenty of these are like a
little more critical but not but still yeah, I'll just
play it.
Speaker 8 (22:58):
Hey, guys, just coming on here to remind y'all that
Osama bin Laden was still a bad person. Crazy that
I'm even having to get on here and say this,
wee like hello, obviously, But I've been seeing a lot
of people, you know, say that they read Osama Laden's
letter to America.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
And I've read the letter, and I.
Speaker 8 (23:18):
Understand that a lot of people are getting educated and
kind of like deconstructing the propaganda that they've grown up
in living in America. But that does not mean that
we should mystify these terrible people. But are also criticized
the West in questions in the West and like how
we operated over here osam b and LANs doing the
same thing. It doesn't mean that they are necessarily wrong
(23:41):
on what they're saying, but it doesn't take away the
fact that they're sexist, fascist, racist dictator.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah. I like this lady. That's a good video.
Speaker 7 (23:51):
Yeah, I think she kind of hits on one point
that I've seen in some of the other like, for
lack of a better term, pro Sama bin Laden, people
have been saying how like, well like people have been
talking about how like they're like finally like seeing past
us propaganda and they're deconstructing the lies that media has
(24:15):
told them. And this kind of gets at something that
we see a lot and kind of in like cult spaces,
is that you rarely ever just completely disengage from some
form of propaganda, you jump.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
To a different form of propaganda.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Absolutely right.
Speaker 7 (24:31):
It's like reading this letter, you're not getting like disillusioned
from US propaganda. You're now buying into someone else's propaganda.
Like the letter to America is a completely other version
of conspiracy riddled propaganda that was put out for a
political purpose, and to try to engage with it in
good faith is not the way to approach that text.
(24:53):
And I think this is a big part of this
problem is how people's education has worked the past few years,
because as they should have learned all of the various
motivations and geo political factors that led to the nine
to eleven attacks, and instead having Islam bin Lan be
characterized as this as this like cartoonish evil that hates
(25:14):
America for freedom and like hates America as a nation
for its freedom. Like that, Yes, that is propaganda. And
if that's all you've had your whole life, and you're
you're you're now seeing this other side. This is probably
like this is definitely like mind blowing, but like you
can look into why these things happen without just falling
for someone else's extremist propaganda, like like yeah, you can.
(25:36):
You can get into the actual reasons for why this happened,
how how US imperialism has caused the geopolitical situation coming
out of the nineties, Like it's it's lots of people
have already done this reading. There's just there's just plenty
of people online who have not looked into this because
they have life, they're doing whatever, like right, they've not
everyone is like us and spends all of our time
reading like political extremist literature.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Not all of us have strong opinions on the different
eras of bin Laden writing.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like Tyla Swift in that sense. Yeah, yeah,
I think there's a.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
There's another There's a thing that's also important here too,
which is I think you see this a lot in Americans,
which is that Americans will have this moment where they
realize that they've been being lied to you by the
American media, and then the thing this convinces them of
is that everyone else is telling the truth. Yes, And
(26:31):
it's like no, every country is doing propaganda. All of
their media is doing propaganda. Like you can't just sort
of ping pong from one like countries sort of prop
media propaganda to another countries because they're all doing it
and the stuff that they're saying also, is it true.
(26:52):
You have to actually like you have to actually try
to work out the sort of the reality of history.
You can't just rely on reading like some other like
some other propaganda's version of events.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
But this comes down to like a lack of basic
understanding of how we do history, which I think is
not anyone's fault. It's because we don't teach you very
well at all in schools, but like the lack of
understanding of the difference between primary and secretary sources, right,
and like people want to get straight to the source,
so they'll go and read one historical primary source without
the adequate secondary context and suddenly be like oh shit,
(27:28):
and yeah they turned into a maoist or apparently memory
of al Kaieda.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
This is why, like, you know, journalists do a lot
of gathering, you know, what they can in the moment
from a scene, from interviews and stuff. But academics there's
always going to be if it's like a good academic,
Like I'm reading a great book right now on trust
in unstable societies, societies like racked by war. So it's
like contrast the concept of It's written by a Gazan
(27:54):
and it's about like how concepts of public trust fluctuate
during conflicts. And he's looking at Lebanon, he's looking at Syria,
he's looking at Iraq, he's looking at Palestine. It's very interesting,
but like he's not just interviewing people. There's like a
set of basically an algorithm that he runs his different
interviews and like the overall sentiments expressed in them through
(28:15):
in order to try and determine, like here is the
aggregate of like what I found as a reaction to
this question from like the people that I surveyed. It's
the same kind of stuff that you do in a
survey to attempt to add a little bit more rigor
than just saying well, I talked to ten people and
most of them said this, So clearly this is a trend, right,
which journalists are often guilty of, and also just goes
ab in part because of that, Twitter goes wild with
(28:39):
this kind of shit. Just like well, I looked through
and I listened to twenty videos and most of them
the kids loved bin Laden, So the kids must love
beIN lobby now, which I don't think is entirely fair,
but I wanted to. I think it's probably a good
time for us to go through the Letter to America
and talk about what is actually in this thing, right,
(28:59):
because you might as well know what's in it. It's
a good thing to read. Again, you can find it
on wiki source. Yeah. So it starts with him kind
of providing just some kind of chronic justifications for the
concept of fighting against an aggressor fighting against like, you know,
someone who is actively attacking you, which is more essentially
(29:20):
how he positions like the relationship between the US and
the Muslim world. And he is a big you know,
a big thing that comes up over and over in
this piece is him talking about how the Caliphate is
being sort of like squashed and stopped from you know,
existing in the form that it should exist by this
kind of constant both attacks on not just Arab democracy,
(29:42):
but on like sovereign Arab states as well as like
support by the US for He complains a lot about
corrupt rulers in the Muslim world, and he is talking
about not just guys like Saddam, but like largely the
Saudi Royal family is a big part of it. He
talks a lot about Iran and basically the uh so
that's kind of like a bit where a lot of
(30:05):
his like grievances start. He does bring up and one
of the videos, James that you posted earlier was like
inn Israeli man responding to this and basically characterizing in
a very inaccurate form saying like, uh, there's no facts
in this letter, Like he doesn't like say anything true. Yeah,
he's just angry at Israel in Palestine, right, He's just
(30:28):
angry at like at that. And he does bring up
Palestine multiple times. There's lines like the blood pouring out
of Palestine must be equally revenged. That's a significant part
of his case, but he also lists a lot of
other areas, right, he is not It is not just
what's happening. It's not just what Israel is doing in
Palestine that he's talking about. There's lines like you attacked
us in Somalia, you supported the Russian atrocities against US
(30:50):
in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against US in Kashmir, and
the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon, and he brings
all of those up several times. He also he does
drop some facts in one of the more salient lines
is you have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children
die every year. It is a wonder that more than
one point five million Iraqi children have died as a
result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern
(31:12):
yet when three thousand of your people died, the entire
world rises and has not yet set down. And that's
not an inaccurate thing to be That's not an inaccurate
statement or a thing to not be angry about. Now,
that's not the full context of it, right, because there
is a bunch of stuff that is in here that
is like bidden laden culture, warshit that absolutely is not
(31:37):
reasonable or a reason to bomb people. Like there's a
point in the letter where he's like, what do we
want from you? The Americans? Like, what do we you know,
al Kaida, the people who have attacked you. He's speaking
kind of broadly for the Uma here. What are we
asking from you? And the first thing we are is
that we are calling you to Islam, which I don't
think is likely to happen. The second thing is we
(31:58):
are calling on you to stop your pression, lies in immorality,
and debauchery that has spread among you. We call him
for you to be a people of manners, principles, honor,
and purity, to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling,
and trading with interest. We call all of you this
that you might be freed from what you have already
been caught up in, that you might be freed from
(32:18):
the deceptive lies that you are a great nation. And
you may recognize that as a pretty insane reason to
kill three thousand people. I mean, there's gambling.
Speaker 7 (32:29):
I think a big part of the framing of this
entire thing is like people are taking this as being like, oh,
look at all these justified reasons because the US was
complicent and active in mass violence in the Middle East.
But like, he's not actually critiquing violence or political violence,
because he is pro political violence. He is like that
(32:51):
he what he is critiquing is Western degeneracy, Like that
that is his actual thing. The first to ask is
to is to convert over to a fascistic version of
his religion. Yeah, Like that's the primary thing this isn't
about like US imperialism in terms of what his end
(33:13):
project is.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
And he's also when he's angry about violence, it is
specifically violence against Muslims, right, because again bin Laden is
fine with doing violence to and having the state potentially
do violence to non Muslims in his ideal state. He
also we read he is very right when he says
that the United States is complicit in the deaths of
over a million iraqis because of our sanctions. This is
(33:36):
in the pre invasion period. One of the worst crimes
this country has been complicit in within our lifetimes. Absolutely
a fucking nightmare. He devotes as much time to that
as he does to this next paragraph I'm going to
read you, which is another one of his grievances. Who
can forget your President Clinton's momorl acts committed in the
official oval office? After that you did not even bring
(33:57):
him to account other than that he made a mistake,
after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a
worse kind of event for which your name will go
down in history and be remembered by nations? He's like,
it's fucked up that you killed a million people. The
worst thing you did was let your president get a blowjob.
That is part of this letter. And that's a crazy
(34:18):
person thing to think. Yeah, like that's just him being
an asshole, because not really a problem, right, there's personal problems, right,
but on the scale of like American crimes, the fact
that we didn't forcepind or forced Clinton out of office
not really on the list.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Yeah, does not really make the cut. Yeah, there is
a long list, and that does not make it.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, then of course he's got He also spends actually
more time on the sex trade than he does on
what the US did to Iraq. You are a nation
that practices the trade of sex and all its forms,
directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on
this under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and read
them and other deceptive names you attribute to it. And
(35:02):
because of all this, you have been described in history
as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to
man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the
nations of man that you brought aids as a satanic
American invention.
Speaker 7 (35:14):
It's it's a very basic reactionary screen.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
It's like, yes, you can, you.
Speaker 7 (35:18):
Can do the same thing with like sections of Hitler
speeches talking about like working conditions and factories. Right, you
could take little sections, put them on TikTok, make it,
make it be read by an ai voice and be like,
oh wow, this is a really good critique of capitalism. Yeah,
Like you're missing the entire point of what Hitler's actual
political project is. This is the exact same thing is
(35:39):
this is exactly this is This is the thing reactionaries do.
This is like they will take a few of these
points talking about imperialism, talking about capitalism, and then wrap
it in a fascistic package like that. That is their
entire political goal. It's it's it's the entire way they recruit,
it's how they spread their propaganda. It's how they get
people to believe conspira theories.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, and we American people especially will be incredibly vulnerable
to it because they'll look at the critiques, which are
in some cases reasonable, right or if somebody's.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Not wrong about every critique he has, but the fact
that he is valuing the murder through starvation of a
million or more people, with Bill Clinton getting the blow
shop some it's not something you should miss in your
interpretation of the validity of his points.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Yeah, this is not a This is not a guy
you need to agree with.
Speaker 7 (36:32):
No, under no circumstances you have to.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Once again drill. Yeah, it's uh, it's certainly a weird one.
The reaction to it has been equally weird and equally misleading.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
And yeah, the the reaction to the reaction like.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah, it shouldn't be that fucking hard for us to be,
Like America shouldn't have three sanctions, killed millions of children
and done how to walk crimes out of the world Asama,
bin lad and bad dude, we can take that middle path.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I do want to get into a little more before
we finish our talking about this. Some of the lines
that I think are really igniting some of these people
who are are now pro bin laden TikTokers, because it
makes sense to me that there are bits of this
that really grab people, and I'm going to read a
couple of them. One of them is this line here,
the freedom of democracy that you called to is for
(37:37):
yourselves and for white race only. As for the West
of the world, you impose on them your monstrous, destructive
policies and governments, which you call the American friends, you
prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic Party in
Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election,
you unleashed your agents in the Algerian Army onto them
and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison
them and torture them. A new lesson from the American
(37:59):
book Democracy. And like, yeah, there's some valid stuff in
that paragraph, right, there's some there's some points he's making
there that people who have started to get people who
have just gotten out of like their parents' bubble, and
who are starting to become aware of the world and
history in the US's place in it. I see why,
especially if they encounter stuff like that out of context,
(38:22):
they will find that intriguing because that's a fairly lucid
and reasonable sentiment of a horrible thing that this country
has been involved in.
Speaker 7 (38:32):
It's also nothing that hasn't been said better by it.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
You can find it, you can find it being said
well ahead, have bin laden saying it by people who
did not kill thousands.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
I want to sort of you know, maybe this is
too late in this episode for anyone to still be
listening to this, but I want to sort of make
an appeal to people who are discovering anticolonialism for the
first time. Yeah, sort of in the wake of this
and in the wake of Israel community and genocide and
the thing that's there's something very very important to understand
about anti colonialism, which is an anti colonialism is not
(39:04):
a single coherent set of politics. There are many, many
different types of anti colonial politics, and those different versions
of anti colonialism wind up with completely different politics. And
this is something you know internationally, there was a very
important distinction between made between left and right wing anti
colonialisms in the US. I mean, we don't have this
(39:24):
right like. This is sort of the problem with Americans
encountering this for the first time is we don't have
left and right wing anti colonialism because the US is
the world's primere colonial power. But in a lot of
parts of the world there is right wing anti colonialism.
And you know, the core difference here is there are
people who hate colonialism because of their sort of deep
(39:45):
and abiding, principled opposition to oppression and exploitation. And there
are people who hate colonialism because their empire lost a
war and they want to go back to being an
empire again. And what kinds like which version of this
politics people take up often has a lot to do
with their class position, and they're, you know, they're they're
sort of like ethnic, racial, or position in the pre
(40:10):
existing society's hierarchy. And that's something very important about bin
Lauden that you can't get from either the American nationalists
they hate us for our freedom shit, And you also
can't get from bin Laden's own description of his motivation. Yeah,
and the thing that's important here, right, is that you know,
Asamo bin Laden is not some Palestinian kid who picked
up an ak after the Israelis murdered his family. Asamom
(40:31):
bin Laden is one of the heirs to the Saudi
bin Laden group. And this is a second I need
this style. We need to stop for a little bit
and talk about the differences between American and Saudi capitalism,
because they know they're not structured the same way. And
one of the sort of big differences here is that
the Saudi bin Laden group isn't like, it's not like
a company, right, it's a conglomerate. And what this means
(40:53):
is that, you know, is that bin Laden's family, like
the people who own the bin Laden Group, which is
founded by his dad. They don't own one company, they
own five hundred companies. The American equivalent to who Bin
Laden is is like it's it's it's imagining if one
if Jeff Bezos' kids went to like a church, like
(41:15):
an Orthodox church of Ukraine's seminary school, and then god
his dad to like go like pay for him to
go do war tourism in Ukraine and then got a
group together to like fly a plane into the Kremlin.
Speaker 7 (41:26):
Yeah, and became like a weird like trad cat.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
That would be kind of cool, it would be funny,
but like, but that's the thing. Like he's not, like
London is not a sort of moral authority on like
Islamic resistance to American imperialism. He's a rich, failed son
who had this combination of like regurgitated say you'd cut up,
and a bunch of his dad's money and like money
from Pakistani intelligence, and that allowed him to sort of
you know, that allowed him to do everything that he did. Right,
(41:51):
that that that's the thing that allowed him and not
you know like that kid in like that that that
that kid in Gazo picked up an ak Like that's
the thing that allowed him to declare war in the US.
And I want to read his account of what he
actually thinks happened to the US. This is this is,
this is from that same uh this this, this is
(42:13):
from that same letter. You are the nation that permits usury,
which has been forbidden by all religions, yet you build
your economy and investments on usury as a result of
this in all its different forms, and guys, is the
Jews have taken over your economy, through which they have
then taken control of your media and now control all
aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving
(42:34):
their aims at your expense, precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned
you against. So I want to like, like like think
for it. Like I wanted people to sort of stop
and look at what he's actually saying here. His argument
for why the US is an imperialist power is that
it is controlled by Jews, who control the economy, in
the media, and has enslaved the rest of the US
(42:56):
to do their will. And this is and I cannot
emphasize this enough word for word, a Nazi yes analysis
what happened to the US, And this is this is
what right wing anti colonialism is, right you look at
like the sort of horrors of colonialism, go oh, this
is bad, and then when someone asks you, okay, why
is this happening, you unload this like utterly half assed
pile of anti Semitic conspiracy theories instead of like an
(43:17):
analysis of capitalism, like he thinks the source of like
American like imperialism and capitalism is interest bearing loans. Yeah, yeah,
this is nonsense, and that's.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
What he means whenever he talks about usury, which, like,
by the way, is a heads up. Every Muslim country
that I am aware of has banks that do what
it fan does it, Yeah, and they do what is
effectively usury. It's just okay. So if you know anything
about like orthodox Judaism, right, you are not supposed to
do anything on the Sabbath, and so some people do
(43:51):
keep that. You're not even supposed to turn on a light, right.
Like one of the old ways this was expressed is
like you would light candles the night before the Sabbath
so that you could have some burning on the Sabbath.
Today there are ways around it that are like you
get lights that are scheduled to go on and off
at certain hours, and it's it's always. It's kind of funny.
There's a lot of jokes about this you get from
the Jewish comedians being like, do you think God is
(44:12):
like tricked by your rule slowering and stuff? But there
are banks in the Muslim world that are the banking
equivalent of that. Well, what they're doing isn't technically taking interest,
but like it works out to be the same thing
for them. They're just they're just getting around anyway. I
think that's an important piece.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Of Catholic Church deciding that uh, fish and chicken on
meat so you could eat them.
Speaker 5 (44:35):
Right right right yeah, where it's like really.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
God, Yeah, yeah, do you think you think God is
like oh yeah, no, I never.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Meant for those things to be meat.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Damn.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
They got me with that chicken shit. That ain't a
cow God seeing it? Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Actually, you have to credit Chick fil A for being
closed on Sunday a little, I guess. But I love
the idea of like God going to like watch a
Catholic congregation go to breakfast and get there fucking like
chicken sandwiches and going, ah, you cut you crafty bastards.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Got me again, guys.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
I didn't think you need those guys, they're so gross.
Speaker 7 (45:11):
That is kind of how the Catholic God works removed.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Yeah, he's like set up a little Sudoku for you.
He's just thrilled that you're getting.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
That has to press a button to get its feed. Yeah, yeah,
I want to.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
I want I want to bring it back to bin
Laden for a second, because I think part of what's
going on here is something that isn't I don't know.
Bin Laden is a product of his specific context, right,
and his specific context is that he grew up in
one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia, and you know,
and his you know, and I guess this is the
(45:50):
thing we should actually I should actually mention I'm being
slightly unfair to the Taliban when I when I talk
about them having loans, because the Taliban are from a
different like school of Islamic jurisprudence then al Kaida is
even though they sort of they kind of work together sometimes.
But like, you know, but the thing, like the sort
of hobbyist school that like bin Laden is from right,
(46:11):
Like he's the reason he has a right wing anticlonial
critique is he's absorbed this sort of like social moras
and he's absorbed you know, the like the the like
involved in the slave trade, level of anti blackness that
you get from the Souds, like from you know, like
the the he's absorbed their anti Semitism. He's absorbed all
of these things. And this is what he sort of
(46:32):
like has constructed as the reason, you know, and filtered
through his sort of cobbling together of like different sort
of like like of like so how you could up
and of sort of like different sort of Islamic thinkers, Like,
this is what he's assembled together. And it's this thing
that it's not a stable, coherent critique of the US.
(46:54):
It's it's it's it's this like it's all of his
sort of like weird prejudices and hang up like grafted
onto anti colonialism. And being able to tell the difference
between someone who is a genuine anti colonialist and someone
who is doing this stuff or like who wants their
empire back or who is like, you know, like pissed
(47:17):
off that gay people exist like that. That is something
that is genuinely very important, and it's something that's made
enormously harder to do by the way that people like
you know, by by the American education system, by the
way people are raised to think about media. Yeah, yeah,
this is this is, this is, this is, this is
this has the been loten rant I we can always
(47:38):
stand to do more ban Laden rants.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Maybe I'll do another episode on him on Bastards one
of these days. But yeah, I uh, good stuff. I
do want to kind of close by reading another bit
from from obl you know, our our friend of the pod.
This one's from two thousand and four October twenty ninth,
and I think it's relevant as we look at the
(48:00):
different ways the current president of the United States, the
former and possibly future president of the United States are
talking about dealing with problems like Islamic extremism. Because I
think bin Laden's words here are pretty salient, and this
comes from a common team made it wound up airing
on Al Jazeera criticizing George Bush ahead of the two
(48:22):
thousand and four election. Your security is not in the
hands of Democratic candidate John Kerry or President George Bush
or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands.
We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush in his
administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half
of which are ruled by the military, and the other
half by the sons of kings. They have a lot
of pride, arrogance, greed, and thievery, and again not wrong,
(48:46):
not wrong about most Muslim majority nations, and not wrong
about most Western nations.
Speaker 4 (48:51):
And it's a good And also's the Bushes too, because yes,
the Bushes were friends with the bin Laden family.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Yes, yes they are you and they are also as
close as the US has to royalty, as is Trump.
Maybe the Kenny maybe the Kennedy Kennedy's but another presidential candidate, ma,
you know, complete with the insane inbred guys. Anyway, anyone
else got anything?
Speaker 3 (49:18):
I'm just baffled.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yeah, well I'm happy. I'm having a good time, you know.
Get on TikTok. Let people know that you love terrorism.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Yeah, can't go wrong for you.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah. Alternatively, get on Twitter or wherever YouTube and film
an angry video in your car about how all of
gen z I ironically and supports the mass killing of civilians.
Do either those seem to be the two primary things
people are doing right now. So get out and join
the herd. Everybody. It's fun.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
What a great place.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
It could happen. Years production of cool Zone Media for
more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Al Zon Media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
There is America hit by God in one of its
softest spots. Its greatest buildings were destroyed. Thank God for that.
There is America full of fear, from its north to
its south, from its west to its east. Thank God
for that. What America is tasting now with something insignificant
to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our
nation has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for
(00:30):
more than eighty years. Its sons are killed, its blood
is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears,
and no one heeds. Those words, written by Osama bin
Laden in October seventh, two thousand and one, were part
of his first statement issued after the nine to eleven attacks.
You might notice a few things about that. One is,
(00:51):
of course, the glorying over the deaths of several thousand people.
And another is that when it comes to his analysis
of the cutrual and psychological impact of nine to eleven
on the United States, he was more or less right.
This is it could happen here A podcast about things
falling apart and nothing better embodies the slow, sometimes rapid
(01:13):
collapse of the United States. As our reaction to nine
to eleven and our continuing responses to it. And so
today I've got in the studio. We don't actually have
a studio. I've got Miya, I've got James, and I've
got Garrison, and we're going to talk about something you've
probably encountered, which is that a letter to America written
(01:34):
by osamaban Lan, which is a different piece from the
one I started this reading, but written along broadly similar lines,
has started to go viral on TikTok, and if you've
seen the reactions to it, it's a mix of a
bunch of you younger people on TikTok reading this letter
for the first time where bin Laden explains why he
did he believed nine to eleven to be justified, and
(01:55):
going wow, he has a point, some of them saying
stuff that's more unhinged than that even and then you've
got this chorus of responses from both kind of centrist
you know, media figures, cultural commentators, pundits, and of course
right wing shitheads who are all making this out to
be the left looves Osama bin Laden. We're going to
get into kind of where the truth lies in this
(02:17):
and also what is in the letter to America but yeah, welcome,
Welcome to the pod everyone.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Thanks Robert, horrible to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
How did you How did you all hear about this,
this new fun trend on the internet.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I returned from spending my evening volunteering the border in
Cucumber to find a dearth of messages about an Issama
bin laden letter or the speech that you just read
the ive a sign for probably a decade to undergraduates
without anyone losing their mind. And yeah, extremely confusing vibes
(02:53):
for me.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
The first time I heard about it was the first
post that I saw was it was only about a
million views. It wasn't even that viral, which I guess
might be true because TikTok is nuts. But yeah, I
think it. I don't know, like I first ran into
it on Twitter, and I think by the time it
hit Twitter, everyone was just sort of in about eighteen
(03:16):
directions completely losing their minds, which is yeas it is now.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, and I think probably a couple of videos of
people dying just seems to pop up every time something
discussed on Twitter.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Now, I think that's an accurate description of kind of
the fallout to it. And as we're writing the or
as we're recording this. Most of these original TikTok videos,
people seem to be reading off of The Guardian's copy
of a Letter to America, which was I guess the
most easy to google prior to I think it was
just the easiest to google. When this all started rolling,
(03:49):
the Guardian took that down because they didn't want people
reading it outside of the context of the article it's in.
This was a horrible mistake. I have found a number
of comments being like, this is them. They're trying to
stop you from reading Ben Laden's words. We're all gonna
be on a watch list. They can't arrest all of us.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
You can.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
You can still access the Letter to America.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's on the sentiment that you can't arrest one of
us suggested that many of these people were not alive
in the media off to moth of them will fucking try.
They did try.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Just to be very clear, you can still read this
whole letter to yourself, and so can everyone else. It's
on Wiki source. If you just google Binladen Letter to America,
it will bring up the Wikipedia page that talks about
this this letter and its context, and that will also
give you a link at somewhere at the bottom to
the wiki source. That's just the unedited translation of the
letter to the American people. So it is not like
(04:45):
the Guardian's move was bad because of they called the
Streisand principle right that if you like try to hide
something from people on the internet, it just it just
makes the problem worse. You never do what the Guardian did.
It's very dumb.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
It was explain the Guardian of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
action yeah. Sur I was gonna say, yeah, they could
have blamed trans people. I'm surprised he didn't get one
of those in there.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
They've been everyone's been trying to pivot very quickly to this.
So obviously you know, my like James, my opinions on
this are kind of complex. On one hand, I am
not an Osama bin laden Fan. He was a bad person.
He was a terrible person, and he did a lot
of damage, not just to the United States. That said,
I've also long been an advocate for like, he's probably
(05:33):
going to go down as one of the most effective
and intelligent military strategic minds of the twenty first century.
The September eleventh attacks worked in large part right because
of how we re reacted because of the amount of
money that we spent, the amount of people that we killed,
the amount of anger that we engendered against the West,
(05:55):
and the amount of damage that we did to our
own society. A lot of the fallout that we're seeing
and all these you know, right wing street gangs and shit,
a lot of it traces back to fall out from
the wars that were started by the Bush administration after
September eleventh. So and that was that was part of
the stated goal, right that was one of the things
he was looking to provoke a reaction. So I'm I'm
(06:16):
both like glad. Hopefully some people are going to come
away from this with a more nuanced understanding of the guy.
And when I say nuanced, I don't mean in a
moral sense, because it's bad to kill thousands of random people,
but in the sense of, like, oh, this was not
I think I need to play something for you guys,
because like, as a nine to eleven, like I was
like nine or ten when it happened, So I remember
(06:38):
it all very well, and I remember the reaction to it,
and I remember the propaganda we encountered. And there's this
thing that you will find written about fascists pretty regularly,
which is that they both need an all powerful enemy,
but they also need an enemy that's like fundamentally free
of virtue, and intelligence and skill are virtues. So both
(07:01):
in the wake of nine to eleven, you got this
sort of al Qaeda and you know, larger sort of
Islamist movements were considered this nefarious force as they are
now in the wake of the attacks by Hamas, right,
this nefarious force that is capable of infiltrating the US
border and seeking terrorist sales into the United States to
hit anybody. And at the same time they're like primitive
(07:21):
idiots who are bigots against who are you know, they
hate women and all this stuff, right, Like, you can't
you can't see them as capable or intelligent, because then
that would that would be to give them a virtue
that you reserve for yourself. Anyway, I think a good
example of that is this parody song by John Valby
that I encountered in a napster download when I was
a child, and it's Bin Laden.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Oh it's the other one.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Okay, Okay, yeah, this one's bad, folks. You're gonna hear
something offensive. I'm playing it now because number one, I
think it's something people should remember or no. But also
because we're about to place these TikTok responses to this
bin Laden video and reads some comments of people who
are very taken by it. And I want to set
up what the pre existing image of bin Laden was
(08:08):
and our culture kind of prior to this reappraisal of him,
because I think that is important. But this is unhinged
so and and it's pretty offensive. So just be aware people,
I'm about to play it now. Wait, oh yeah, no,
you're gonna have all right? Can you see the giant
Confederate So this is from a John Valby album. I
think it was called Real Women Do Play in Mud Puddles.
(08:30):
I don't know, maybe not. That may just be a
random image I did not check. There's like describe there's
the general lee as a mudding truck with a giant
Confederate flag behind it and then with the Confederate flag
like colors the text real women do play in mud
puddles and it's as Southern girls girl on the on
(08:51):
the windshield of the truck. So I'm gonna start playing
this song. I'm not gonna play all of it, but
this should set up for you kind of what the
acceptable discourse on Ben Laden was right after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Well, we come from Alabama, but we're in Afghanistan, Navy
Shield and.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Dreamer Rays hunting for a man.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
They say he.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Has a bearded face of diaper on his head.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
I heard we won't be coming home until that fucker's dead.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
No, don't do.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
I've come to fuck your fanny with.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Some and frax on my name.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So had you guys heard that before?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
No?
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Unfortunately?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, wow, yeah, see.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
This is the part of America but I missed growing
up abroad. Yeah, never fully understand now.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
We freezed about thirty seconds into that minute and thirty
second song, but it was like playing random clips of
art to go along with the music. And the one
we paused on was Homer Simpson with an American flag
behind him, outlined and read with a pistol in his
hands aimed at a bug eyed Osama bin Laden. So
great nuanced discourse here, so.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Many memories like I don't know what it was. People
loved that, like bug ey'd bin Luden thing. This is
like like, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Don't know what.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
No, I think I know, well, I'm pretty sure I
know why, which is that so. One of the most
popular pieces of like media popular media in response in
the nine to eleven attacks was an episode of South
Park that came out literally like a week or two
after the attacks, which basically, up until fairly recently, TV
was always made on a significant delay, so there were
(10:40):
no shows on air that could pivot to comment on
something really quickly. The West Wing managed to kind of,
but it was like a dog shit episode. But the
South Park guys really pivoted and they put out this episode.
It was basically like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Cartman
as Bugs Bunny and Osama bin Laden as Elmer Fudd, right,
and there were a bunch of like scenes of him
(11:00):
like bug eyes bugging out when like shit would happen,
and it was It was weird because like the I
think the most people who watched it, including myself, took
it in the same manner of that song as like, yeah,
fuck these guys, these like you know in ways that
we're pretty bigoted. There was also like the episode opened
with an extended bit of kids in Afghanistan with everything
(11:22):
around them and all the adults getting murdered by US
airplanes for no seeming reason, which was like part of
the anyway whatever. I think one of the was, like
what we're seeing in some of like why young people
are reacting to this letter by bin Laden so strongly
is they've never really gotten to appraise the guy objectively.
(11:44):
And I'm not saying that that's happening across the board now,
but I don't think the reactions are nearly as unreasonable
as they're being painted.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, he kind of existed an avatar of evil and
like with zero nuance or complexity, just like, yeah, a
satanic sort of totem in American culture. Yeah, which is
why I've always assigned it just like I think it
behooves us to understand.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, I agree entirely. So I went through and I
looked at some of the tiktoks being made about this,
And first off, TikTok does seem to have taken some
action to try to stop this. I don't think it's
going to work either. But like when I typed in
letter to America recently, the text I got on TikTok
was this phrase may be associated with behavior or content
(12:27):
that violates our guidelines promoting a safe, positive experiences TikTok's
top priority. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yah yah. You can still
find shit by like typing in bin Laden, but it's
it's not as much shit as findable right now, so
worth noting. One of the first things I came across
that was interesting is like, so there's this trend on TikTok.
If you're not a TikToker, I'm going to play what
(12:50):
are the people on TikTok. There's a lot of AI
videos where either the text will be read by AI
with like images and video clips on screen, or you'll
some there's some creepy instances of people just generating AI
faces sometimes of like actual murderers and criminals to talk
about the ship they did. It's really weird. But one
of the top videos I found on this from about
(13:13):
a little less than a day ago, is just the
entire text of bin Laden's letter to America being read
by an AI, and it it sounds weird. I'm going
to just let everyone get a listen to this.
Speaker 6 (13:25):
In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful,
permission to fight against disbelievers is given to those believers
who are fought against because they have been wronged. And
surely a law is able to give them believers victory.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I think it misses some of the some of the
stirring contexts.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Delivery.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
No, but you get the responses of this, and like
one of my favorite ones that I've gotten the screen
is chee cheekis Fressa saying y'all are going to hate me,
but he kind of ate.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And then the.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
First response is no crumbs, which Garrison has our gins
it's Sultan.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
That means like, I agree basically, you know, it's it's oh,
you're twenty one, now you're.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Out of touch. Yeah. Yeah, the first feeling old moment live.
Speaker 7 (14:14):
I yeah, I think that means he like ate everything
and there's like no crumbs left.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
No, oh okay, that's that's good. Very literal.
Speaker 7 (14:25):
Yeah, I think I think that's what it means. But again,
this is this is very.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Very very particular culture.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We're really here.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
It's the bleeding edge. Yeah yeah. The last comment following
that is bizarre. Trump isn't a good person either. The
gay people have nothing to do with me. This does
not say book for Trump. I think you can't read
see this is you know, it's it's and that's the.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Op responding to no crumbs. So I don't know what's
missing here.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
It's really it's really hard to tell.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, I think these people may be in a parallel reality.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
I don't think really anyone who's participating in this trend
is very intelligent or has or has very good media literacy,
or has really looked into like American imperialism very much. No,
but we will, we will, We will get to that
in this Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
So the next comment is so much truth coming out
this season. And then I appreciated this from Walker. He
lost me at the end, he being bin laden with
the religiously charged homophobia, but that left out he was
right about everything else, justified and well said, see the
voice of.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Reason, the voice. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
Well, but also also now we'll get through it. There's
a few more problems with the letter than that.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, I'm doing doing like you're doing nine to eleven,
but with a pride flag is yeah, perfect, And I
have no notes.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah, you can't.
Speaker 7 (15:53):
You can't remove those things from the rest of the letter.
In the action, they actually do create a complete hole.
You can't actually pick and choose little parts that you
want it. It's like trying to pick and choose parts
of qan On. You're like, yeah, well, actually there are
rich people who are pedophiles. You're like, well, yes, but
you can't, Like you can't. That's not giving Qan on
(16:14):
The benefit here is these are totally different things.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
And the thing that I think people should be doing,
just so we're clear on my stands here, is seeing
bin Laden as an incisive and intelligent actor who had
a significant degree of understanding of this country and its culture.
And the terrible things that he did were as effective
as they were because he understood things about us that
(16:39):
we should understand about us, right, Otherwise you are not
going to be able to successfully act within this culture
to improve things and reduce harms. You need to understand
why what he did worked as well as it did,
and you need to understand what he knew about us,
because it's pretty useful stuff to understand. That is different
from saying that what he is like, you don't have
(17:02):
to view it as the truth, right because it's it's
it's not like the truth in any moral sense, but
it's the truth in that like if you if you
read some of Hitler's writings on democracy, Hitler accurately understood
the vulnerabilities of a democratic system and how to exploit them.
You should understand that you're not saying, wow, he was
spitting truth. You're just saying, well, some people are, Robert.
(17:24):
That is a problem. Yeah, some people, in fact are.
Speaker 7 (17:27):
Do you know who else is spitting truth?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Robert our advertisers, Yes, that is right.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
We are.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Are we sponsored by the new predition of mine at
this point? No, we are sponsored by al Bagdati. He's
still alive, folks. Mm I don't know. I don't know.
Here here's the ads. Okay, so we're back. I'm going
(17:59):
to play another one of the one of these zoomer
Bin Laden loving videos for you. Well, no you're not, No,
I'm not.
Speaker 7 (18:10):
Lots of these videos have also been taken down recently.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I go, yeah, they which Yeah. I thought this one
was interesting because it was someone who was like really
pro bin Laden, being like, yeah, you know, he was
completely right about everything. What a genius, So I love him.
But all of the comments were people being like, that's
fucking kind of crazy to say, bro, like, yeah, let's
(18:34):
take a step back.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
So the thing this reminds me of this, this is
a phenomenon I've run into with American maoists. Yeah, we're like, okay,
they'll read MAO. They'll read MAO saying something that is,
you know, perfectly reasonable, like you should not talk about
something unless you've researched it first. Yeah. Now, any normal
person has heard this when they were like two, But
(18:58):
these people apparently have never heard this, and they run
into it through MAO and they're like, holy shit, maw
is like the greatest living theorist.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
What's a brilliant thinker?
Speaker 4 (19:07):
You guys need bid LAUNI and tell you the US
sucks like really.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Health Yes, people do because they get shit history education
because their.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Their education of nine to eleven was the video I
started this episode.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, like we failed as a country, like just completely.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
No, seriously, Like I like a fucking like horse that
I will whip till it's dead.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Is that?
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Like in twenty sixteen, there was this huge thing about
we need to teach history properly and media literacy right
after Donald Trump got elected because a lot of people
didn't know what the fuck was going on. We just
and then we just stopped, and everyone was like, nah,
fuck it, why not, We'll just keep doing stem stem
STEM and then like like teaching undergraduates often like intro
courses for years it's become very clear that we are
(19:54):
completely failing in the United States to educate people or
equip them with any understanding of a man history, and
so they just get propaganda.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
This is a big part of why I focus on
crypto so much, because James, that is exactly where crypto
comes from, is we learned a lot of stem shit,
but we never learned any humanities or anything. So you
get people saying stuff like, well, the underlying technology behind
crypto is so impressive, and it's like, no, it's you
can't point to a single useful piece of work it's
ever done. You just find it impressive because there's a
(20:25):
lot of complex math problems and that's what you that's
what you value, Like, yes.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
The resultimate, Yeah, the yodd stick of academic achievement or intelligence.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Yeah, anyway, speaking of people who are less intelligent than
a yardstick. It's not exactly what you said, James. But
I also wanted to play here's a right wing influencer
who's collected a bunch of these videos. I hadn't run
into this guy before, but oh no, did they drop
him too? Are they just purging everything?
Speaker 7 (20:50):
So TikTok has been removing all of this. Almost all
of the videos associated with this trend you can you
can find the compilations on Twitter are really some of
the only Yeah, so these videos are still alive.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, and this is a right wing guy. This was
the right wing guy making fun of it. But man,
that's interesting because this was, like I found this five
minutes ago.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
So I mean, I think this is the thing that like,
it's really hard to talk about this without it being
in like an insane right wing thing. But TikTok is
really Americans only encounter with the way that Chinese style
censorship works, which is they take a giant hammer and
they just like hit things with it. Yeah, I supposed
like it's not it's not like targeted. It's like like
(21:30):
we found everyone who said the word bin lauded and
we band it right, everything associated with the trend, Like, yeah,
you know, like this is this is the way that
like censorship stuff tends to work in China because it's
kind of easy to do and it covers your ass.
And so now Americans are like experiencing this.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I'm sorry, I'm just enjoying seeing what Rubberts have suggested
for other tiktoks. He might like, oh, thank goodness for
the shower's top shelf products. Yeah, hashtag hadtalk.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, I'm a big fan. I think it's because of
this person, Earth earth Mother, Earth earth Mother basically who
actually I brought her up specifically because she was an
example of like the way this is getting portrayed in
kind of like particularly like Twitter and more mainstream sort
(22:18):
of descriptions of it is like all of these gen
zers are full throat for Osamo. They've all gone crazy,
and you can certainly find no shortage of those videos.
I found a bunch of other videos that are more critical.
It is difficult for me to tell what the preponderance
of is because there's not no one's basing what they're
saying on a sentiment analysis. They're basing it on what
(22:38):
their timelines forwarded them based on their passionate when they
typed letter to America or whatever into Twitter or into
a TikTok. But like I ran into this lady's video
and like so not plenty of these are and I
found others like this. Plenty of these are like a
little more critical but not but still yeah, I'll just
play it.
Speaker 8 (22:58):
Hey, guys, just coming on here to remind y'all that
Osama bin Laden was still a bad person. Crazy that
I'm even having to get on here and say this,
wee like hello, obviously, But I've been seeing a lot
of people, you know, say that they read Osama Laden's
letter to America.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
And I've read the letter, and I.
Speaker 8 (23:18):
Understand that a lot of people are getting educated and
kind of like deconstructing the propaganda that they've grown up
in living in America. But that does not mean that
we should mystify these terrible people. But are also criticized
the West in questions in the West and like how
we operated over here osam b and LANs doing the
same thing. It doesn't mean that they are necessarily wrong
(23:41):
on what they're saying, but it doesn't take away the
fact that they're sexist, fascist, racist dictator.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah. I like this lady. That's a good video.
Speaker 7 (23:51):
Yeah, I think she kind of hits on one point
that I've seen in some of the other like, for
lack of a better term, pro Sama bin Laden, people
have been saying how like, well like people have been
talking about how like they're like finally like seeing past
us propaganda and they're deconstructing the lies that media has
(24:15):
told them. And this kind of gets at something that
we see a lot and kind of in like cult spaces,
is that you rarely ever just completely disengage from some
form of propaganda, you jump.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
To a different form of propaganda.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Absolutely right.
Speaker 7 (24:31):
It's like reading this letter, you're not getting like disillusioned
from US propaganda. You're now buying into someone else's propaganda.
Like the letter to America is a completely other version
of conspiracy riddled propaganda that was put out for a
political purpose, and to try to engage with it in
good faith is not the way to approach that text.
(24:53):
And I think this is a big part of this
problem is how people's education has worked the past few years,
because as they should have learned all of the various
motivations and geo political factors that led to the nine
to eleven attacks, and instead having Islam bin Lan be
characterized as this as this like cartoonish evil that hates
(25:14):
America for freedom and like hates America as a nation
for its freedom. Like that, Yes, that is propaganda. And
if that's all you've had your whole life, and you're
you're you're now seeing this other side. This is probably
like this is definitely like mind blowing, but like you
can look into why these things happen without just falling
for someone else's extremist propaganda, like like yeah, you can.
(25:36):
You can get into the actual reasons for why this happened,
how how US imperialism has caused the geopolitical situation coming
out of the nineties, Like it's it's lots of people
have already done this reading. There's just there's just plenty
of people online who have not looked into this because
they have life, they're doing whatever, like right, they've not
everyone is like us and spends all of our time
reading like political extremist literature.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Not all of us have strong opinions on the different
eras of bin Laden writing.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like Tyla Swift in that sense. Yeah, yeah,
I think there's a.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
There's another There's a thing that's also important here too,
which is I think you see this a lot in Americans,
which is that Americans will have this moment where they
realize that they've been being lied to you by the
American media, and then the thing this convinces them of
is that everyone else is telling the truth. Yes, And
(26:31):
it's like no, every country is doing propaganda. All of
their media is doing propaganda. Like you can't just sort
of ping pong from one like countries sort of prop
media propaganda to another countries because they're all doing it
and the stuff that they're saying also, is it true.
(26:52):
You have to actually like you have to actually try
to work out the sort of the reality of history.
You can't just rely on reading like some other like
some other propaganda's version of events.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
But this comes down to like a lack of basic
understanding of how we do history, which I think is
not anyone's fault. It's because we don't teach you very
well at all in schools, but like the lack of
understanding of the difference between primary and secretary sources, right,
and like people want to get straight to the source,
so they'll go and read one historical primary source without
the adequate secondary context and suddenly be like oh shit,
(27:28):
and yeah they turned into a maoist or apparently memory
of al Kaieda.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
This is why, like, you know, journalists do a lot
of gathering, you know, what they can in the moment
from a scene, from interviews and stuff. But academics there's
always going to be if it's like a good academic,
Like I'm reading a great book right now on trust
in unstable societies, societies like racked by war. So it's
like contrast the concept of It's written by a Gazan
(27:54):
and it's about like how concepts of public trust fluctuate
during conflicts. And he's looking at Lebanon, he's looking at Syria,
he's looking at Iraq, he's looking at Palestine. It's very interesting,
but like he's not just interviewing people. There's like a
set of basically an algorithm that he runs his different
interviews and like the overall sentiments expressed in them through
(28:15):
in order to try and determine, like here is the
aggregate of like what I found as a reaction to
this question from like the people that I surveyed. It's
the same kind of stuff that you do in a
survey to attempt to add a little bit more rigor
than just saying well, I talked to ten people and
most of them said this, So clearly this is a trend, right,
which journalists are often guilty of, and also just goes
ab in part because of that, Twitter goes wild with
(28:39):
this kind of shit. Just like well, I looked through
and I listened to twenty videos and most of them
the kids loved bin Laden, So the kids must love
beIN lobby now, which I don't think is entirely fair,
but I wanted to. I think it's probably a good
time for us to go through the Letter to America
and talk about what is actually in this thing, right,
(28:59):
because you might as well know what's in it. It's
a good thing to read. Again, you can find it
on wiki source. Yeah. So it starts with him kind
of providing just some kind of chronic justifications for the
concept of fighting against an aggressor fighting against like, you know,
someone who is actively attacking you, which is more essentially
(29:20):
how he positions like the relationship between the US and
the Muslim world. And he is a big you know,
a big thing that comes up over and over in
this piece is him talking about how the Caliphate is
being sort of like squashed and stopped from you know,
existing in the form that it should exist by this
kind of constant both attacks on not just Arab democracy,
(29:42):
but on like sovereign Arab states as well as like
support by the US for He complains a lot about
corrupt rulers in the Muslim world, and he is talking
about not just guys like Saddam, but like largely the
Saudi Royal family is a big part of it. He
talks a lot about Iran and basically the uh so
that's kind of like a bit where a lot of
(30:05):
his like grievances start. He does bring up and one
of the videos, James that you posted earlier was like
inn Israeli man responding to this and basically characterizing in
a very inaccurate form saying like, uh, there's no facts
in this letter, Like he doesn't like say anything true. Yeah,
he's just angry at Israel in Palestine, right, He's just
(30:28):
angry at like at that. And he does bring up
Palestine multiple times. There's lines like the blood pouring out
of Palestine must be equally revenged. That's a significant part
of his case, but he also lists a lot of
other areas, right, he is not It is not just
what's happening. It's not just what Israel is doing in
Palestine that he's talking about. There's lines like you attacked
us in Somalia, you supported the Russian atrocities against US
(30:50):
in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against US in Kashmir, and
the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon, and he brings
all of those up several times. He also he does
drop some facts in one of the more salient lines
is you have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children
die every year. It is a wonder that more than
one point five million Iraqi children have died as a
result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern
(31:12):
yet when three thousand of your people died, the entire
world rises and has not yet set down. And that's
not an inaccurate thing to be That's not an inaccurate
statement or a thing to not be angry about. Now,
that's not the full context of it, right, because there
is a bunch of stuff that is in here that
is like bidden laden culture, warshit that absolutely is not
(31:37):
reasonable or a reason to bomb people. Like there's a
point in the letter where he's like, what do we
want from you? The Americans? Like, what do we you know,
al Kaida, the people who have attacked you. He's speaking
kind of broadly for the Uma here. What are we
asking from you? And the first thing we are is
that we are calling you to Islam, which I don't
think is likely to happen. The second thing is we
(31:58):
are calling on you to stop your pression, lies in immorality,
and debauchery that has spread among you. We call him
for you to be a people of manners, principles, honor,
and purity, to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling,
and trading with interest. We call all of you this
that you might be freed from what you have already
been caught up in, that you might be freed from
(32:18):
the deceptive lies that you are a great nation. And
you may recognize that as a pretty insane reason to
kill three thousand people. I mean, there's gambling.
Speaker 7 (32:29):
I think a big part of the framing of this
entire thing is like people are taking this as being like, oh,
look at all these justified reasons because the US was
complicent and active in mass violence in the Middle East.
But like, he's not actually critiquing violence or political violence,
because he is pro political violence. He is like that
(32:51):
he what he is critiquing is Western degeneracy, Like that
that is his actual thing. The first to ask is
to is to convert over to a fascistic version of
his religion. Yeah, Like that's the primary thing this isn't
about like US imperialism in terms of what his end
(33:13):
project is.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
And he's also when he's angry about violence, it is
specifically violence against Muslims, right, because again bin Laden is
fine with doing violence to and having the state potentially
do violence to non Muslims in his ideal state. He
also we read he is very right when he says
that the United States is complicit in the deaths of
over a million iraqis because of our sanctions. This is
(33:36):
in the pre invasion period. One of the worst crimes
this country has been complicit in within our lifetimes. Absolutely
a fucking nightmare. He devotes as much time to that
as he does to this next paragraph I'm going to
read you, which is another one of his grievances. Who
can forget your President Clinton's momorl acts committed in the
official oval office? After that you did not even bring
(33:57):
him to account other than that he made a mistake,
after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a
worse kind of event for which your name will go
down in history and be remembered by nations? He's like,
it's fucked up that you killed a million people. The
worst thing you did was let your president get a blowjob.
That is part of this letter. And that's a crazy
(34:18):
person thing to think. Yeah, like that's just him being
an asshole, because not really a problem, right, there's personal problems, right,
but on the scale of like American crimes, the fact
that we didn't forcepind or forced Clinton out of office
not really on the list.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Yeah, does not really make the cut. Yeah, there is
a long list, and that does not make it.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, then of course he's got He also spends actually
more time on the sex trade than he does on
what the US did to Iraq. You are a nation
that practices the trade of sex and all its forms,
directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on
this under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and read
them and other deceptive names you attribute to it. And
(35:02):
because of all this, you have been described in history
as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to
man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the
nations of man that you brought aids as a satanic
American invention.
Speaker 7 (35:14):
It's it's a very basic reactionary screen.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
It's like, yes, you can, you.
Speaker 7 (35:18):
Can do the same thing with like sections of Hitler
speeches talking about like working conditions and factories. Right, you
could take little sections, put them on TikTok, make it,
make it be read by an ai voice and be like,
oh wow, this is a really good critique of capitalism. Yeah,
Like you're missing the entire point of what Hitler's actual
political project is. This is the exact same thing is
(35:39):
this is exactly this is This is the thing reactionaries do.
This is like they will take a few of these
points talking about imperialism, talking about capitalism, and then wrap
it in a fascistic package like that. That is their
entire political goal. It's it's it's the entire way they recruit,
it's how they spread their propaganda. It's how they get
people to believe conspira theories.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, and we American people especially will be incredibly vulnerable
to it because they'll look at the critiques, which are
in some cases reasonable, right or if somebody's.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Not wrong about every critique he has, but the fact
that he is valuing the murder through starvation of a
million or more people, with Bill Clinton getting the blow
shop some it's not something you should miss in your
interpretation of the validity of his points.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Yeah, this is not a This is not a guy
you need to agree with.
Speaker 7 (36:32):
No, under no circumstances you have to.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Once again drill. Yeah, it's uh, it's certainly a weird one.
The reaction to it has been equally weird and equally misleading.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
And yeah, the the reaction to the reaction like.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah, it shouldn't be that fucking hard for us to be,
Like America shouldn't have three sanctions, killed millions of children
and done how to walk crimes out of the world Asama,
bin lad and bad dude, we can take that middle path.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
I do want to get into a little more before
we finish our talking about this. Some of the lines
that I think are really igniting some of these people
who are are now pro bin laden TikTokers, because it
makes sense to me that there are bits of this
that really grab people, and I'm going to read a
couple of them. One of them is this line here,
the freedom of democracy that you called to is for
(37:37):
yourselves and for white race only. As for the West
of the world, you impose on them your monstrous, destructive
policies and governments, which you call the American friends, you
prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic Party in
Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election,
you unleashed your agents in the Algerian Army onto them
and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison
them and torture them. A new lesson from the American
(37:59):
book Democracy. And like, yeah, there's some valid stuff in
that paragraph, right, there's some there's some points he's making
there that people who have started to get people who
have just gotten out of like their parents' bubble, and
who are starting to become aware of the world and
history in the US's place in it. I see why,
especially if they encounter stuff like that out of context,
(38:22):
they will find that intriguing because that's a fairly lucid
and reasonable sentiment of a horrible thing that this country
has been involved in.
Speaker 7 (38:32):
It's also nothing that hasn't been said better by it.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
You can find it, you can find it being said
well ahead, have bin laden saying it by people who
did not kill thousands.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
I want to sort of you know, maybe this is
too late in this episode for anyone to still be
listening to this, but I want to sort of make
an appeal to people who are discovering anticolonialism for the
first time. Yeah, sort of in the wake of this
and in the wake of Israel community and genocide and
the thing that's there's something very very important to understand
about anti colonialism, which is an anti colonialism is not
(39:04):
a single coherent set of politics. There are many, many
different types of anti colonial politics, and those different versions
of anti colonialism wind up with completely different politics. And
this is something you know internationally, there was a very
important distinction between made between left and right wing anti
colonialisms in the US. I mean, we don't have this
(39:24):
right like. This is sort of the problem with Americans
encountering this for the first time is we don't have
left and right wing anti colonialism because the US is
the world's primere colonial power. But in a lot of
parts of the world there is right wing anti colonialism.
And you know, the core difference here is there are
people who hate colonialism because of their sort of deep
(39:45):
and abiding, principled opposition to oppression and exploitation. And there
are people who hate colonialism because their empire lost a
war and they want to go back to being an
empire again. And what kinds like which version of this
politics people take up often has a lot to do
with their class position, and they're, you know, they're they're
sort of like ethnic, racial, or position in the pre
(40:10):
existing society's hierarchy. And that's something very important about bin
Lauden that you can't get from either the American nationalists
they hate us for our freedom shit, And you also
can't get from bin Laden's own description of his motivation. Yeah,
and the thing that's important here, right, is that you know,
Asamo bin Laden is not some Palestinian kid who picked
up an ak after the Israelis murdered his family. Asamom
(40:31):
bin Laden is one of the heirs to the Saudi
bin Laden group. And this is a second I need
this style. We need to stop for a little bit
and talk about the differences between American and Saudi capitalism,
because they know they're not structured the same way. And
one of the sort of big differences here is that
the Saudi bin Laden group isn't like, it's not like
a company, right, it's a conglomerate. And what this means
(40:53):
is that, you know, is that bin Laden's family, like
the people who own the bin Laden Group, which is
founded by his dad. They don't own one company, they
own five hundred companies. The American equivalent to who Bin
Laden is is like it's it's it's imagining if one
if Jeff Bezos' kids went to like a church, like
(41:15):
an Orthodox church of Ukraine's seminary school, and then god
his dad to like go like pay for him to
go do war tourism in Ukraine and then got a
group together to like fly a plane into the Kremlin.
Speaker 7 (41:26):
Yeah, and became like a weird like trad cat.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
That would be kind of cool, it would be funny,
but like, but that's the thing. Like he's not, like
London is not a sort of moral authority on like
Islamic resistance to American imperialism. He's a rich, failed son
who had this combination of like regurgitated say you'd cut up,
and a bunch of his dad's money and like money
from Pakistani intelligence, and that allowed him to sort of
you know, that allowed him to do everything that he did. Right,
(41:51):
that that that's the thing that allowed him and not
you know like that kid in like that that that
that kid in Gazo picked up an ak Like that's
the thing that allowed him to declare war in the US.
And I want to read his account of what he
actually thinks happened to the US. This is this is,
this is from that same uh this this, this is
(42:13):
from that same letter. You are the nation that permits usury,
which has been forbidden by all religions, yet you build
your economy and investments on usury as a result of
this in all its different forms, and guys, is the
Jews have taken over your economy, through which they have
then taken control of your media and now control all
aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving
(42:34):
their aims at your expense, precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned
you against. So I want to like, like like think
for it. Like I wanted people to sort of stop
and look at what he's actually saying here. His argument
for why the US is an imperialist power is that
it is controlled by Jews, who control the economy, in
the media, and has enslaved the rest of the US
(42:56):
to do their will. And this is and I cannot
emphasize this enough word for word, a Nazi yes analysis
what happened to the US, And this is this is
what right wing anti colonialism is, right you look at
like the sort of horrors of colonialism, go oh, this
is bad, and then when someone asks you, okay, why
is this happening, you unload this like utterly half assed
pile of anti Semitic conspiracy theories instead of like an
(43:17):
analysis of capitalism, like he thinks the source of like
American like imperialism and capitalism is interest bearing loans. Yeah, yeah,
this is nonsense, and that's.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
What he means whenever he talks about usury, which, like,
by the way, is a heads up. Every Muslim country
that I am aware of has banks that do what
it fan does it, Yeah, and they do what is
effectively usury. It's just okay. So if you know anything
about like orthodox Judaism, right, you are not supposed to
do anything on the Sabbath, and so some people do
(43:51):
keep that. You're not even supposed to turn on a light, right.
Like one of the old ways this was expressed is
like you would light candles the night before the Sabbath
so that you could have some burning on the Sabbath.
Today there are ways around it that are like you
get lights that are scheduled to go on and off
at certain hours, and it's it's always. It's kind of funny.
There's a lot of jokes about this you get from
the Jewish comedians being like, do you think God is
(44:12):
like tricked by your rule slowering and stuff? But there
are banks in the Muslim world that are the banking
equivalent of that. Well, what they're doing isn't technically taking interest,
but like it works out to be the same thing
for them. They're just they're just getting around anyway. I
think that's an important piece.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Of Catholic Church deciding that uh, fish and chicken on
meat so you could eat them.
Speaker 5 (44:35):
Right right right yeah, where it's like really.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
God, Yeah, yeah, do you think you think God is
like oh yeah, no, I never.
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Meant for those things to be meat.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Damn.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
They got me with that chicken shit. That ain't a
cow God seeing it? Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Actually, you have to credit Chick fil A for being
closed on Sunday a little, I guess. But I love
the idea of like God going to like watch a
Catholic congregation go to breakfast and get there fucking like
chicken sandwiches and going, ah, you cut you crafty bastards.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Got me again, guys.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
I didn't think you need those guys, they're so gross.
Speaker 7 (45:11):
That is kind of how the Catholic God works removed.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Yeah, he's like set up a little Sudoku for you.
He's just thrilled that you're getting.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
That has to press a button to get its feed. Yeah, yeah,
I want to.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
I want I want to bring it back to bin
Laden for a second, because I think part of what's
going on here is something that isn't I don't know.
Bin Laden is a product of his specific context, right,
and his specific context is that he grew up in
one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia, and you know,
and his you know, and I guess this is the
(45:50):
thing we should actually I should actually mention I'm being
slightly unfair to the Taliban when I when I talk
about them having loans, because the Taliban are from a
different like school of Islamic jurisprudence then al Kaida is
even though they sort of they kind of work together sometimes.
But like, you know, but the thing, like the sort
of hobbyist school that like bin Laden is from right,
(46:11):
Like he's the reason he has a right wing anticlonial
critique is he's absorbed this sort of like social moras
and he's absorbed you know, the like the the like
involved in the slave trade, level of anti blackness that
you get from the Souds, like from you know, like
the the he's absorbed their anti Semitism. He's absorbed all
of these things. And this is what he sort of
(46:32):
like has constructed as the reason, you know, and filtered
through his sort of cobbling together of like different sort
of like like of like so how you could up
and of sort of like different sort of Islamic thinkers, Like,
this is what he's assembled together. And it's this thing
that it's not a stable, coherent critique of the US.
(46:54):
It's it's it's it's this like it's all of his
sort of like weird prejudices and hang up like grafted
onto anti colonialism. And being able to tell the difference
between someone who is a genuine anti colonialist and someone
who is doing this stuff or like who wants their
empire back or who is like, you know, like pissed
(47:17):
off that gay people exist like that. That is something
that is genuinely very important, and it's something that's made
enormously harder to do by the way that people like
you know, by by the American education system, by the
way people are raised to think about media. Yeah, yeah,
this is this is, this is, this is, this is
this has the been loten rant I we can always
(47:38):
stand to do more ban Laden rants.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Maybe I'll do another episode on him on Bastards one
of these days. But yeah, I uh, good stuff. I
do want to kind of close by reading another bit
from from obl you know, our our friend of the pod.
This one's from two thousand and four October twenty ninth,
and I think it's relevant as we look at the
(48:00):
different ways the current president of the United States, the
former and possibly future president of the United States are
talking about dealing with problems like Islamic extremism. Because I
think bin Laden's words here are pretty salient, and this
comes from a common team made it wound up airing
on Al Jazeera criticizing George Bush ahead of the two
(48:22):
thousand and four election. Your security is not in the
hands of Democratic candidate John Kerry or President George Bush
or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands.
We had no difficulty in dealing with Bush in his
administration because they resemble the regimes in our countries, half
of which are ruled by the military, and the other
half by the sons of kings. They have a lot
of pride, arrogance, greed, and thievery, and again not wrong,
(48:46):
not wrong about most Muslim majority nations, and not wrong
about most Western nations.
Speaker 4 (48:51):
And it's a good And also's the Bushes too, because yes,
the Bushes were friends with the bin Laden family.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Yes, yes they are you and they are also as
close as the US has to royalty, as is Trump.
Maybe the Kenny maybe the Kennedy Kennedy's but another presidential candidate, ma,
you know, complete with the insane inbred guys. Anyway, anyone
else got anything?
Speaker 3 (49:18):
I'm just baffled.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yeah, well I'm happy. I'm having a good time, you know.
Get on TikTok. Let people know that you love terrorism.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Yeah, can't go wrong for you.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah. Alternatively, get on Twitter or wherever YouTube and film
an angry video in your car about how all of
gen z I ironically and supports the mass killing of civilians.
Do either those seem to be the two primary things
people are doing right now. So get out and join
the herd. Everybody. It's fun.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
What a great place.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
It could happen. Years production of cool Zone Media for
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