Oh dear. It seems that the world’s wokest newspaper has blundered, again. The Guardian has today been forced to remove a letter by, er, Osama Bin Laden after it went viral on TikTok. The letter had proudly been up on the Graun’s website since 2002, explaining how the terror chief launched his war against the United States in part because of its support of Israel. But now in its place is a sign with the headline ‘Removed: document’ and a brief explainer:

This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s ‘letter to the American people’, as reported in the Observer on Sunday 24 November 2002. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023.

A Guardian spokesperson added in a statement to 404 Media that:

The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared today on social media without its original context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.

The letter was originally published alongside another article explaining that the letter ‘was originally posted in Arabic on a Saudi Arabian website previously 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.’ It also included the UK and American governments’ response to it.

The TikTok trend seems to have started with a video posted by Lynnette Adkins, in which she told her nearly 12 million followers, ‘I need everyone to stop doing what they’re doing right now and go read “Letter to America,” I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis right now.’ Other users swiftly followed suit and included similarly gushing responses.

Still, for those disappointed to have missed reading Bin Laden’s hate screed: don’t worry, the Guardian has got you covered! ‘Resist the new Rome‘ by the Al Qaeda founder is still online, as is a crass piece by its then Comment Editor Seumas Milne in which he suggested, a mere two days after 9/11, that Americans were ‘once again reaping a dragons’ teeth harvest they themselves sowed.’

Plenty more fun content for Gen Z to discover online…