Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt, thinks September 11th attacks were "defensible"

[afeelingunacted]

What the absolute fuck pic.twitter.com/ofyBwxxWBP
- Casey Stegman (querying) (@cstegman) November 16, 2023

• In a series of now deleted tweets the author condemned The Guardian taking down Bin Laden's Letter to America in which he reveals his reasoning behind the September 11th attacks
• Felker-Martin called destroying the twin towers "principled" and "

Comments

[solira21]

Yall, I simply do not think dipping into the outrage cycle about a bunch of terminally online white leftists using hyperbole on twitter is a good idea. It's a tiny fraction of people. Frankly, I find the fact that this is getting massive press attention online over a million other things feels intentional, a way to vent discomfort over how successfully people who AREN'T terminally online but are leftists have organized in support of Gaza

[afeelingunacted]

She's a well known writer with a big reach. I think her slide into antisemitism is notable and should be condemned.

I've also posted news in support of pro-Palestine demonstrations here, as have others. You're welcome to do the same.

[solira21]

I don't appreciate the tone. I wasn't coming for you specifically in posting this-by "massive press attention," I don't mean LiveJournal posts; I mean things like Biden actually taking the time out of his day to talk about the Bin Laden TikTok trend, for example

[benihime99]

Well known writer with a big reach

In what realm????

[goldenhera]

I 100 percent agree with you. I said this in roundup but this is manufactured virality. In a couple weeks, Congress will be using all the press on this to claim TikTok is helping Hamas to recruit Gen Z.

[solira21]

Yep, precisely. Deeply annoyed that OP tried to raise antisemitism as a talking point when this is the obvious, very real critique. It is not ignoring the antisemitism of Bin Laden or anyone else to say that a bunch of Tik Tokers and twitter personalities making hyperbolic statements about him is completely worth ignoring.

[baxtyre]

manufactured virality by whom?

[goldenhera]

Oh I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think an outside party did it! This just reeks of some dumbasses making inflammatory videos which then get stitched by others who add their hot take which then get posted to Twitter which catches the eye of some reporter at WaPo. Do I believe hordes of Gen Zrs are falling for Bin Laden's rhetoric? Nope! But it's a good story. We saw this happen a million times on Twitter in the last decade. TikTok is just the latest lens into what scary thing the youth are thinking.

[fuckinmagnets]

Yashar Ali

https://twitter.com/broderick/status/1725210803698085946

[just444]

well that tracks

[pumkinbutter]

The proof of this still says there were 300-500 videos with millions of views, and the hashtag #lettertoamerica had 2 million views before Yashar Ali’s tweet.

[fuckinmagnets]

And? There's 1.1 billion users, that's not a trend.

[deerlike]

There were fewer than 300 videos using the hashtag #lettertoamerica that garnered around 2 million views by Wednesday, according to TikTok, a platform with an estimated 1.6 billion monthly active users. For comparison, a recent 24-hour period on the platform had 200 million videos using #GymTok and #travel videos racked up 137 million.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213712136/tik-tok-bin-laden-videos-osama

[pumkinbutter]

Of course these videos weren’t as popular as fitness and travel ones.

There were still hundreds of videos being viewed by millions of people.

[deerlike]

The point is that they weren't viral, based on the metric.

[starchit]

THIS. It's happening already!