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