‘Is That Orwellian Or Kafkaesque Enough For You?’ The Guardian Removes Bin Laden’s ‘Letter To America’
Media Lens
(...) On 15 November, [The Guardian] removed Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ which it had hosted on its website for almost 21 years. What was suddenly so problematic about the letter that it had to be abruptly removed by the Guardian after being on its website for so long (an archived version can be seen here)?
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'Removed: document'. The Guardian removes Osama bin Laden's 'Letter to America'. Screenshot taken the day after it was the most viewed link on the Guardian website (image by Glenn Greenwald).
The letter has been ‘rediscovered’ during Israel’s current genocidal assault against Palestinians in Gaza, with people around the world discussing relevant issues online. The Guardian link to the letter went viral, particularly among young people on TikTok, with 14 million views of videos tagged with #lettertoamerica. Many of these videos were posted by young Americans, shocked to find that people around the world hate their country because of strong grievances rooted in real issues. (...)
‘And yet, after 9/11, the US government instructed the television networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox – do not show any speeches or interviews with Osama bin Laden, because they didn’t want the American population hearing from him what their actual grievances were. They didn’t want Americans to think that maybe we had done things in that part of the world that caused it to happen, that causes “blowback”, to use the CIA’s term.’
As with any statement from an influential or powerful figure, bin Laden’s letter needs to be read critically. There is much to revile in the letter, not least its antisemitism and homophobia. But consider some of the grievances he detailed against the US government, summarised below:
- Palestine was ethnically cleansed to allow the state of Israel to be set up in 1948. Since then, the Palestinians have been subjected to an Israeli military occupation, suffering for decades as a result of massacres, imprisonment, torture, shootings, bombs, destruction of homes and livelihoods: all backed with massive military, economic and diplomatic support from the US.
- Sanctions against Iraq, pushed heavily by the US, led to the deaths of 1.5 million Iraqis, 0.5 million of them children under 5.
- US attacks in Somalia, support for Russian atrocities in Chechnya, and support for Israeli aggression against Lebanon.
- Oppression of the populations of US client states in the Middle East, ruled by authoritarian monarchs, or where democratically elected leaders were removed and replaced by US-friendly dictators.
- The exploitation of the Middle East’s natural resources, especially oil, by Western corporations at paltry prices secured through economic and military threats.
- US military bases spread across the region, protecting what the US sees as its own assets.
- The leading US role in destroying climate stability – in particular, its refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement made at the 1997 UN Climate Summit – in order to preserve the profits of US fossil fuel giants.
- US power and influence has been used, not to defend universal humanitarian principles and values, but to secure US geostrategic interests and profits.
- The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. (...)
So why did the Guardian, which proclaims its credentials in supposedly enabling readers to understand the world, remove bin Laden’s letter from its website? (...)
As Greenwald observed, US ‘Big Tech’ companies – Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) – are already subjected to censorship in accordance with the dictates of the US security state, as the ‘Twitter files’, a cache of leaked documents, showed. TikTok, a Chinese company, was the only major platform outside the reach of the US. But, noted Greenwald, they were told that, as a condition of being able to continue to operate in the US, they would have to agree to the censorship demands of the US government. Hence, TikTok’s determination to ban TikTok clips discussing #lettertoamerica.
In other words, the censorship actions taken by both TikTok and the Guardian align with the requirements of the US government. This should come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with the long history of the Guardian acting as a liberal gatekeeper for establishment power. Moreover, the paper’s ever-closer relationship with UK state security services, themselves subservient to US state power, is abundantly clear. (...)
As Greenwald noted:
‘Is that Orwellian enough, or Kafkaesque enough, for you? The article in which most people had an interest in reading was the [letter hosted by the] Guardian [which], precisely because too many people were interested in it, [the editors] decided to remove, so that people couldn’t read it any longer. It’s a document by a major historical figure. The person we’re told was responsible for the 9/11 attack explaining to Americans why people in that part of the world were angry enough with America to do that.
‘And the Guardian decided, even though it had been up on their website for 21 years, that now that people were discussing it in connection with the war in Gaza from Israel, and US support for it, you can no longer read it.’ (...)
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