A transgender horror author who sparked outrage earlier this year by threatening to slit JK Rowling’s throat has hailed Osama bin Laden’s destruction of the Twin Towers.
Gretchen Felker-Martin on Thursday joined in the chorus of admiration for the al-Qaeda leader, sparked by TikTokers suddenly ‘discovering’ his rational for 9/11.
The Massachusetts-based author wrote on X, where she has 30,000 followers: ‘Can pretty safely state that bin Laden and I did not, uh, agree on much, but blowing up the World Trade Center is probably the most principled and defensible thing he did.’
Bin Laden’s 2002 ‘Letter to America’ has been circulating widely this week, in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war.
TikTok users say that bin Laden opened their eyes to American foreign policy and taught them valuable lessons about global geopolitics. The revival in interest, and ignorance of bin Laden’s ideas, have caused shock and anger.
Felker-Martin on Friday deleted the tweet, and apologized. She previously shared her desire to cut JK Rowling’s throat over the Harry Potter author’s stance on transgender issues.
Gretchen Felker-Martin posted, then deleted, a tweet praising Osama bin Laden
‘The other day in a moment of distress I talked out my ass to play devil’s advocate in a tasteless, needless way,’ she tweeted.
‘I sincerely regret it, and I apologize to anyone hurt or offended by my thoughtless words.’
But one X user pointed out that she had praised bin Laden in the past.
He cited Felker-Martin’s August 2020 tweet, justifying the September 11 attacks.
‘The huge crime of 9/11 is that the s*** we do every day overseas gets done to us exactly once,’ she said.
The revival of the 2002 document has bemused and enraged many.
The White House expressed dismay at the resurgence of interest in the letter.
‘There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history – highlighting them as his direct motivation for murdering 2,977 innocent Americans,’ said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House.
‘And no one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden.
‘Particularly now, at a time of rising antisemitic violence in the world, and just after Hamas terrorists carried out the worst slaughter of the Jewish people since the Holocaust in the name of the same conspiracy theories.
‘Like President Biden said this year in remembrance of the Americans who lost their lives because of Osama bin Laden, ‘it’s more important now than ever that we come together’ against a ‘rising tide of hatred and extremism.”
TikTok said they will be removing all content invoking the letter.
‘Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,’ TikTokPolicy wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter.
‘We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.’
The video-sharing platform claims the number of videos on TikTok is ‘small’ and ‘reports of it trending [on the] platform is inaccurate.’
The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins who posted a video on November 14 telling her followers to read the manifesto
Hundreds of members of Generation Z posted videos in which they seemingly confused the hateful diatribe for an intellectual think piece
Smoke still rises from ground zero of the collapsed World Trade Center two days after the attack
Clare Baron lays a rose for her cousin Mark Whitford at the National September 11 Memorial during an annual ceremony to commemorate the 22nd anniversary
Family members of victims attend a ceremony observing the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the Pentagon
‘This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media,’ the post added.
Videos with the hashtag ‘LettertoAmerica’ have been viewed 7.3 million times.
Extraordinarily the majority are claiming support for bin Laden’s reasoning – without a thought for the freedoms he criticizes.
The letter began to gain traction online after UK newspaper The Guardian linked to a 2002 article, which translated it in full, in a piece about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
It was subsequently deleted, with the outlet explaining to DailyMail.com that it was being shared ‘without its original context.’
The letter continued to spread on X but was prevented from spreading on Reddit.
The Guardian did not explain further as to how the link was made between the current conflict in the Middle East and a verbatim letter from bin Laden that was more than 20 years old.
The link to the letter spread, with hundreds of TikTokers posting videos in response to reading it, in which they appear to confuse the hateful diatribe for an intellectual think piece.
The letter was originally posted with an article explaining that the original version was in Arabic in a website used by al-Qaeda to ‘disseminate messages and ‘was sent to hundreds of subscribers to an email list run by Mohammed al-Massari, the UK-based Saudi Arabian dissident.’
The message added that the US government was included on the list.
The various trending videos about the letter include no context around bin Laden’s life as a jihadist.
In other sections of his correspondence, bin Laden blames the US government for spreading AIDS throughout the world, described homosexuality as ‘immoral’ and sought to turn America into an oppressive religious state similar to Afghanistan.
The trend appears to have started with TikToker Lynette Adkins who posted a video on November 14.
‘I need everyone to stop what they’re doing right now and go read – it’s literally two pages – go read ‘A Letter to America,” she said.
In his infamous letter, Bin Laden ranted that the treatment of Palestinian people had to be ‘revenged’ and expressed justifications for the killing of civilians in the name of jihad.
Bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs in a raid on his compound in Pakistan in May 2011.
‘The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq,’ bin Laden wrote.
For this reason, the Saudi Arabian terrorist wrote, all Americans and Jewish people were culpable for ‘the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against [Muslims].’
Bin Laden wrote that AIDS was a ‘Satanic American Invention’ and repeatedly made anti-Semitic remarks including suggesting that American society was infiltrated by Jewish people who ‘control your policies, media and economy.’
Felker-Martin is no stranger to courting controversy.
Earlier this year, named a series of writers she accused of transphobia – including Rowling – in a tweet sent on February 12.
She added: ‘If they all had one throat, man.’
She had earlier decried the murder of British transgender teenager Brianna Ghey 16, and suggested Rowling and her ilk had stoked violence which led to the killing.
Another writer she railed against, journalist Jesse Singal, condemned Felker-Martin for making the death threat, and said she has a long history of making threats of violence.
Gretchen Felker-Martin has been criticized for tweeting a death threat against J.K. Rowling
Rowling, seen with her husband watching the Laver Cup tennis in September, has become a target for militant transgender activists
In Felker-Martin’s debut novel, Manhunt, published in February 2022, Rowling is murdered by being burned alive.
The book is promoted as ‘an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and trans men on a grotesque journey of survival.’ It has been lauded as ‘visceral’ ‘gripping’ and ‘brilliant’ by NPR and the New Yorker.
Felker-Martin’s tweet – which she has now deleted – came shortly before she joined 180 activists in signing a letter to The New York Times attacking their coverage of transgender issues, which has seen the paper examine whether young children should be given puberty blockers, or gender reassignment surgery.
Rowling has shared similar views, and also questioned whether trans women should be allowed access to some female-only spaces such as prisons, domestic abuse shelters, or sporting contests.