In the surest sign yet that Twitter's relevance is swiftly disappearing, it became the locus of a particularly silly "kids these days" moral panic last week. It started when Twitter personality Yashar Ali decided to rile up his over 700,000 followers on the platform now called X by posting a video purporting to show that it had suddenly become trendy on TikTok for young people to read quotes from Osama bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America" and exclaim how much they agreed with the now-deceased terrorist leader.
People took it seriously. Multiple news outlets rushed outraged responses. Even the White House fell for it. But there should have been more skepticism. Ali, after all, was exposed in a 2021 Los Angeles Magazine as a shady character who makes money and gains status with untrustworthy social media content meant to manipulate less-than-savvy internet users. So it's no surprise the story was swiftly debunked by tech journalists who pointed out that the trend amounted to just a few trolls.
Yes, the videos had gotten a solid number of views and comments, but only after people like Ali sent a huge amount of hate traffic towards them. As John Herrman of New York pointed out, this is more a story about how Twitter operates these days. The platform susbists by ginning up outrage with an aging and increasingly out-of-touch crowd, through false or misleading content. There are lots of problems with TikTok, for sure — it also has a serious disinformation problem — but no, there's no real reason to believe it's radicalizing the youth into sympathy with Islamic terrorists.
No, what's frustrating is that, while people were winding themselves up over a not-really-true story about young people and Al Qaeda, a much more serious story has yet to gain similar traction: How the newly elected Republican Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has a habit of expressing America-hating rhetoric that sounds like it could have come straight out of Osama bin Laden's mouth.
In a video recorded just weeks before he ascended to his role as the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, Johnson filmed a video for the World Prayer Network with rabidly homophobic pastor Jim Garlow. As Frederick Clarkson has chronicled for Salon, Garlow is part of an apocalyptic Christian movement that wishes to end secular democracy and replace it with "a utopian biblical kingdom where only God's laws are enforced." (Which, of course, sounds much like bin Laden's hope for an Islamic caliphate.) Garlow asked Johnson if he felt that it was finally "a time of judgment for our collective sins."
To this, Johnson replied, "The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable." As evidence, he noted how many young people identify as something other than straight.
Johnson's words echo those of bin Laden's "Letter to America: "We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest."
The similarities don't end there. As Fred Kaplan at Slate noted in his condemnation of the (way overblown) TikTok videos, the "Letter to America" is "an attack on the modern secular world," in which bin Laden demands "complete submission" to his version of Islam and "the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict" it. Bin Laden was especially angry that Americans "separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator."
Johnson, like bin Laden, rejects American secularism, saying it's a "misnomer" to believe in the separation of church and state. His career has been devoted to forcing his brand of Christianity on all Americans, from taxpayer funding for exhibits that claim dinosaurs rode Noah's ark to laws prohibiting sexual behavior that doesn't adhere to his rigid fundamentalist rules. He repeatedly insists that, despite their words to the contrary, the Founding Fathers wanted religion to guide government policy. The main difference of opinion between the two religious radicals is what flavor of far-right religious oppression they prefer: Christian or Muslim?
One can, of course, point out that bin Laden was a violent terrorist who funded a deadly attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, which Johnson has not done. But it's also true that Johnson has signaled sympathy towards that other terrorist attack on American democracy, Donald Trump's insurrection of January 6, 2021. Johnson was one of the leaders of Trump's coup effort, heading the coalition of House Republicans demanding that electoral votes for President Joe Biden be thrown out. This week, he authorized the release of security footage from the Capitol riot, so that MAGA propagandists can cherry-pick and distort the contents to create a false narrative valorizing the insurrectionists.
For certain, January 6 wasn't as deadly as September 11. But it's also true that Johnson has a far better shot than bin Laden ever did of ending American democracy and replacing it with a theocratic government.
As Tim Miller of the Bulwark writes, by calling American culture "depraved" and saying God is "going to have to bring people to their knees," Johnson is not only being hateful to his fellow Americans. His rhetoric also reflects the way Trump talks about the majority of Americans who oppose him as "the vermin and the enemy within." Both are highly reminiscent of how bin Laden talked about Americans as a dissolute people who "have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you."
It says a lot about the failures of our media that a few random attention-seekers on TikTok have caused more of a freakout than this lengthy list of commonalities between bin Laden and Johnson, a man who actually has the power to put his anti-American vision into action. It's just much easier to sell a story about wayward youth than it is to explain why the nerdy-looking politician with the good hair is actually plotting our collective destruction. "Kids these days" stories allow older people a chance to vent their anxieties about aging and mortality under the veneer of self-righteousness. A story about how the second person in line for the presidency wishes for an American apocalypse is just depressing.
There is one reason, however, to be sympathetic to the people who were freaked out when they saw misleading headlines about "viral TikTok videos" allegedly celebrating bin Laden. As I've written about extensively, there is no doubt that far-right propaganda and disinformation, spread through social media, are undermining our democracy. TikTok has absolutely become a locus of fascist recruiting, as evidenced by the popularity of Andrew Tate and other such far-right influencers on the platform. It's just that, in this particular case, the "bin Laden had a point" argument was so idiotic that even relatively credulous people saw through it.
Crucially, the biggest, most dangerous source of disinformation is not randos on TikTok. It's the same people we've been dealing with for years now: Trump and his right-wing acolytes like Johnson. They're the ones who are pumping out a steady stream of lies meant to destabilize American democracy so they can seize power. Worse, they use official government powers, like the ability to hold House hearings or release security video footage, in order to do it. A few dumb kids experimentally saying ignorant stuff they soon regret is not a story. What does matter is that an entire political party, the GOP, is attempting to finish the job bin Laden started by decimating our democracy.
