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

[iamkeroberos]

Genuinely, what the fuck? Like… know it’s the age of toxic hot takes, but “Sept 11 was good, actually” is WILD.

[blahhhnata17]

The tiktok comments on the Osama Bin Laden letter I read yesterday were fucking wild I don’t know if I was in a twilight zone episode 😬😬😬😬

[iamkeroberos]

More and more I’m convinced nuance has died. You can look at what the Israeli government is doing and see how the majority of western governments are blindly supporting them and be upset and disgusted and devastated, but like… that doesn’t mean you should side with a literal terrorist who engineered a plan to kill thousands of civilians.

Also like, how fucking woke to be like “wow he had such good points” about an antisemitic misogynist murderer. Any point he may have made about American imperialism (i have not read the letter) has definitely already been made by people who aren’t Osama fucking Bin Laden.

[tsarinakate1]

This is an extremely small sample size based on 2 gen z, but i totally agree about them not understanding nuance. I'm a Big through Big Brothers and Sister and i try to provide answers to my Little that are nuaced and look at both sides, as best I can and she haaaaates it. She wants me to have a definite answr for everything and girlfriend thats not how most of this works

[iamkeroberos]

It’s awesome you do that!

Honestly, I feel really bad for a lot of gen x kids, because they grew up in such a shit show with media they can’t trust, failing public education (thanks, no child left behind/systemic defunding of schools!), AND unrestricted internet access since they can remember. At least, with most millennials and older millennials we grew up at the same time the internet grew up and it gave us a different perspective.

Media literacy in the age of deep fakes and shit like that is also crazy. They see so much fake shit constantly that they don’t believe the real things either. It sucks.

[sandstorm]

Also like, how fucking woke to be like “wow he had such good points”
about an antisemitic misogynist murderer. Any point he may have made
about American imperialism (i have not read the letter) has definitely
already been made by people who aren’t Osama fucking Bin Laden.

basically.

I read parts of the letter and you can't deny that the US loots countries in the "middle east" and kills people in the name of freedom", but bin laden wasn't HIDING the antisemitism at all, and other people who weren't him said it "US imperialism is bad" that we can look to.

[irajaxon]

Any point he may have made about American imperialism (i have not read the letter) has definitely already been made by people who aren’t Osama fucking Bin Laden.

a-fucking-men! this whole conversation should end right there.

this whole "maybe bin laden had points 🤔" trend screams uninformed teenagers/young adults wading into political awareness and discourse for the first time. like, i remember back in the early/mid 2000s, "loose change" and "zeitgest" were passed around punk forums and we totally believed that shit because we were politically unknowledgeable and, frankly, easily swayed 15-year-olds and questioning government for the first time. LUCKILY, i read and learned more and grew out of that garbage conspiratorial sphere.

this woman is fully grown, though, zero excuse.

[myhipusername]

I don’t know where we went wrong lol like I’m glad people are understanding just how much of an oppressive, militarized country the US is but that doesn’t mean Bin Laden is right either?? Like the essential point of freedom from /all/ brutal systems went completely over their head

[lomhm]

they’re kids discovering for the first time how the US utilizes the empty ideals of freedom and democracy as a bulwark for insidious, violent imperialism, lol. bin laden has been upheld to these kids as the greatest evil the world has ever known. children, many of whom weren’t even born when 9/11 took place. a majority have no frame of reference outside US-centric discourses to understand such an event

[fuckinmagnets]

I think it's very telling that people are trying to frame this as "all these Gen Zs are supporting OBL!!!" when there's plenty of videos talking about how it changed their understanding of WHY the 9/11 attacks happened. It's a common technique shut down any nuanced conversation.

[blahblahcakes64]

You said it better than I could have-this is exactly the takeaway.

[ostsiberia]

"their minds are rightfully blown reading his letter for the first time and, instead of seeing the ramblings of a tribalistic psychopath proclaiming to love killing for killings sake and boasting an inherent hatred for democracy and freedom and the gays, they find a comparatively sober meditation on the violence, destruction, and death that the region has suffered at the hands of US foreign policy."

Precisely worded

[alienclit]

It's the edgiest of takes from terminally online people who don't interact with people around them in real life. I get the feeling they think it was just a bunch of coke-snorting boat shoe wearing FiDi bros who died in 9/11 or something.