#WTH: TikTok & Osama bin Laden & Hamas

Rep. Mike Gallagher on your kids and their Chinese overlords

Before anything, the whole WTH family wishes you and yours a very happy holiday… We hope your Thanksgiving was full of love and gratitude and not too terribly much turkey and stuffing. Among our thanks, we’re very grateful for all of our listeners and subscribers…. Thank you for being part of our weekly adventures — Clara, Marc, and Dany. And now the bad news…

You can’t have missed the insane trending of Osama bin Laden’s two decade old “letter to America” on TikTok. Here’s the New York Post’s cover:

Indeed, if you only got your news from TikTok, here’s what you’d probably think:

1. Hamas was justified in its attacks of October 7, if they happened at all.

2. Israel killed the concert goers on October 7.

3. Osama bin Laden understood Jewish control of America better than its own government.

TikTokers with hundreds of thousands of followers all over the United States have approvingly cited the dead terrorist leader of al Qaeda. Here are a couple of excerpts, in case you’re interested:

Your former president warned you previously about the devastating Jewish control of capital and about a day that would come when it would enslave you; it has happened.

And another:

…you continue to support the oppressive Israelis in their occupation of our Palestine in response to pressures on your administration by a Jewish lobby backed by enormous financial capabilities.

You might say to yourself, these are the ravings of a pretty average antisemite; you’d be right. But that antisemite ordered the most lethal attack on America in its history, murdering 3000 in New York and Washington. Context, you know?

Here was TikTok user Goddess, who has over 70k followers. “This letter is so well-written and so reasonably structured in an argument.” And “everything he said was valid.”

A video by @ajunie_bee with over 320k followers noted that “Bin Ladin’s Letter to America Serves as proof that the Palestianian War and The fight to free Palestine is deeper than we think. Hamas is Bin Ladin & 9/11 Could’ve been avoided!” It’s true, Junie Bee can’t spell. But she knows what she thinks.

A video by @_leslierae with more than 147.4k followers explained that: “Trying to go back to life as normal after reading Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ and realizing everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.”

We share these gems because although TikTok has now removed them, they are a reflection of what TikTok’s algorithm was promoting until protests from the United States finally caused the parent company, ByteDance, to take all of them down.

Nonetheless, reams of antisemitic content remains on TikTok. And in China, the Communist Party government too has chosen a side in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, coming down firmly on Hamas’ side. On the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, antisemitic content is reaching millions, promoted both by government-blessed “influencers” and government spokesmen. Israel has been removed from the two major Chinese map platforms.

What do we care? Isn’t there a first amendment, at least in the United States? Sure, and libertarians have been active on social media insisting that pro-Hamas content is protected speech. That it is. Nonetheless, neither Twitter (X) nor Instagram nor Facebook are foreign companies. Their algorithm is in the United States, and while it may be driven by left-wing bias, it isn’t driven by a foreign totalitarian agenda.

Pew reports that 32% of Americans aged 18-29 regularly get their news from TikTok. 43% of all TikTok users say they regularly get news from the site, up from 33% in 2022. Simply, ask yourself: If TikTok can herd hundreds of thousands of Americans towards Osama bin Laden, what could they do in the event of a war with Taiwan? How about in a US election?

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: It’s time to ban TikTok.

HIGHLIGHTS

Why is the TikTok problem different from other social media?

MG: Just saying social media in general is a cesspool is an admission that we have a problem with social media use in general, but the peculiar problem of TikTok is twofold. One is the basic ownership structure. You might hate Instagram and all these other American social media companies, you may think that we need to remove section 230 or break them up and they're acting like monopolies, blah, blah, blah, but these are American companies. They may not always reflect American values, but they're subject to a certain system in America that TikTok, because it's owned by a Chinese company, which is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, is not.

And as TikTok becomes the dominant social media company and it becomes the dominant news platform in America, we now have to ask ourselves this question, do we want to let the CCP, albeit transitively via ByteDance, to control the dominant media platform in America when we know for a fact they have a desire to pit Americans against Americans and stoke division? Because they do it overtly on our social media platforms. They elevate and intensify all of the worst rhetoric about how America is an evil, racist country that's responsible for every problem in the world, particularly the problems in the Middle East, and it must constantly apologize for its past sins.

Why was the Chinese reaction to October 7 so strange?

MG: So now then, if you do a comparison, and there's a couple analyses that are not yet ready for prime time, just looking at the October 7th phenomenon and reaction and comparing TikTok to other platforms, there does seem to be something unusual going on with TikTok. Now, there could be something confounding the data, but right now, it just seems like the algorithm itself is optimizing to intensify antisemitic rhetoric. And Dany, I'll pause here and let you comment. The fact that we have Americans looking at Osama bin Laden's letter to America, the TLDR version of which is the evil Jews control everything in America and they and America must be destroyed is crazy. It is so crazy, it's hard to wrap your head around.

Is something changing in China?

MG: The bias I now bring into this is, increasingly, it looks like there is a proper axis of bad guys right against us. We can call them an authoritarian axis, or an anti-American axis, or the new axis of evil, whatever. I haven't settled on the right term, but the dominant partner in this de facto alliance is China. They have strange bedfellows in terms of their junior partners, Iran and Russia, but the shared interest that is currently keeping them all together is to undermine, if not destroy, the American-led global order.

And therefore, when one of the junior partners decides they're going to, let's say, invade Ukraine, though China may not have scripted that, they backed them. They backed them and they backed their rhetoric around concerns over color revolutions globally. They blame America. Perhaps they benefit from the chaos in Europe in terms of their primary ambition, which is to take Taiwan by force if necessary. And similarly, in the Middle East, China was perfectly content to develop an economic relationship with not only Israel, but also Iran. They signed this 25-, 30-year economic partnership agreement with Iran. China has severe energy needs, Iran has energy resources. I think, for at least the last 18 months, if not longer, China's been the biggest purchaser of Iranian oil, which also, by the way, presents an opportunity to de-dollarize the global economy.

So there's a variety of things going on, but it all comes back simply to their ultimate ambition, which is to become the regional hegemon and ultimately the dominant power globally, and that requires taking America down a few notches.

What specifically is going on with the bin Laden letter and the antisemitism on TikTok?

MG: Here's what we know. We know that in the past they've suppressed content related to subjects that are sensitive for the Chinese Communist Party, most notably the genocide in Xinjiang province. [By the way,] India notably has banned TikTok completely. They're not an international pariah. There's no domestic crisis related to the banning of TikTok in India. It hasn't slowed down their economy. I think now it's surpassed China as the biggest country in the world, certainly the biggest democracy in the world. They banned TikTok. So, we know in the past that they've had bad behavior.

I think the analyses that are about to come out with respect to this specific incident will suggest that something strange is going on unique to TikTok, in terms of there may be antisemitic propaganda all over social media, but it's unusually pronounced on TikTok. But I can't say that this was definitively a test run. But if nothing else, and this was sort of where you started with the question, the fact that it is a news source gets to something critical because TikTok always claims that, "This is just fun. It's about entertainment. It's about dance videos, et cetera, et cetera. It's just user-generated content." Well, I don't think that's tenable anymore, given that a third of adult users get their news from it, the numbers are more pronounced the younger you get. One in six American teens say they're on the platform almost constantly. It has significance far beyond short, stupid dance videos.

Put differently, also, it's not just about the data. It's not just about their ability to track your location or see what websites you visit and spy on you effectively. It's about the propaganda power. It's about their ability to control what information you get and what you think is true and what you don't think is true. And even if you don't think there's any evidence that the CCP has influenced ByteDance to influence TikTok to do bad things, what about the CCP's behavior over the last two decades would make you think that we should give them the opportunity to do this in the future?

So TikTok may be using this to see whether it can control U.S. public opinion?

MG: If you just listen to things Xi Jinping talks about... He talks constantly about the smokeless battlefield, which is his phrase for the information war, the ideological war, which he views to be the most important part of this competition. And we had all this momentum to tackle this issue in the form of either a ban or a for sale, but then we completely lost it because of two things, a massive multimillion dollar lobbying campaign that TikTok has paid for. If you remember, in the Republican debates, they ran two ads in, I think the first two debates, I don't remember in the third one, that position TikTok as like the champion of small business. It's American flags, and apple pie, and dairy farms.

And the other thing is the Senate tried to take action. They didn't quite get their construct right. It was viewed as a grant of excessive authority to the executive branch. And so, now people are gun shy about doing anything. But if we don't do anything and if we allow the status quo to continue, TikTok will become the dominant media platform in America, perhaps the dominant news source in America. And the fact that in the past, the Chinese Communist Party has refused to allow a sale to an American entity, tells you everything you need to know. Because they clearly want to maintain control of this tool, this weapon going forward. So, it would be an act of national suicide to allow the status quo to continue. We have to act before it's too late.

Will the White House do anything about TikTok?

MG: [W]hen asked about TikTok, cabinet level officials, notably Gina Raimondo in the past have said, "Well, we can't do anything because we don't want to anger younger voters." I mean, she almost explicitly put it in those terms. My kids are three and below, so I haven't quite gotten to this phase. I understand that the angering 14-year-olds is not a fun thing to do, but the fear of angering 14-year-olds can't be the basis of our foreign policy.

What could be done?

MG: A sale to an American company would alleviate most of my concerns and I think would be an acceptable outcome. But the CCP, as I said before, in the past has balked at allowing that. TikTok and its algorithm are on what is effectively their export control list, which I think provides evidence that they realize how valuable this tool is.

Do you see TikTok playing a role in the disastrous reaction to the attack on Israel on American campuses?

MG: When you have Ivy League professors out there saying that they were overjoyed on October 7th and encouraging this stuff, [it’s clear] that some of our institutes of higher education have completely lost their way. They're not equipping these kids with the skills they need, the critical thinking skills to survive in the real world. A lot of them are going to be unemployable, by the way, given that this stuff is not going to disappear.

But you’re still cautiously optimistic?

MG: I actually think the bin Laden fiasco as well as more generally the glut of antisemitic content on TikTok has given us an opportunity that we didn't have a few months ago to do the right thing. In fact, I've been fielding calls from people that are... I never would've expected, would've been eager to do something both from my colleagues in Congress and people in positions of influence in the private sector or in the entertainment industry. So I think we have to seize the current moment to go forward with a bill that, again, doesn't repeat the mistakes of the Senate bill that went forward that's more narrowly tailored, but actually does the thing that we want to do, which is either ban TikTok or force a sale. I'm cautiously optimistic that we can get that bill through the relevant committee in Congress and on the House floor, and I think there's an opportunity for us to have a bipartisan vote that sends it to the Senate.

What about the next president?

MG: I think DeSantis and Haley probably would take action. Vivek, obviously not. Trump's a total wildcard, right? I honestly don't know. I don't know. I don't know what he would do, but at least half the people that are on the stage would right now. So again, it's a very narrow window, but I do think we have to act before it's too late. Take your pick of issue that the CCP could use to just turn Americans against Americans and create chaos. Think of all the uncertainty we were dealing with related to the origins of the pandemic, right? I mean, multiply that by 20X the next time we're in a crisis, or think about the ability to give them to meddle in our elections, which presumably is an issue that everybody cares about.

Full transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok. (Rep Mike Gallagher, The Free Press, November 1, 2023) 

Harvard CAPS Poll 

Israel Goes Unnamed on China Online Maps (WSJ, November 1, 2023)

TikTok Spreads Disinformation in Israel-Gaza War as It Rises as Primary News Source for Youth (Yahoo,  November 17, 2023)

More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites (Pew Research Center, November 15, 2023) 

Osama bin Laden's infamous 'Letter to America' after 9/11 promoted by TikTok influencers, goes viral (Fox News, November 16, 2023) 

TikTok will SCRUB videos of anti-Israel Gen-Zer's fawning over Bin Laden's vile 2002 'Letter to America' because it 'clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism' (Daily Mail, November 16, 2023) 

Videos About Bin Laden’s Criticism of U.S. Surge in Popularity on TikTok (New York Times, November 16, 2023) 

Jewish Celebrities and Influencers Confront TikTok Executives in Private Call (New York Times, November 16, 2023) 

TikTok’s Osama bin Laden Fiasco (Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2023)

Sen. Josh Hawley renews efforts to ban TikTok, citing app's influence on Israel-Hamas war opinions (NBC News, November 7, 2023)

The truth about TikTok hashtags and content during the Israel-Hamas war (TikTok, November 12, 2023)

Osama bin Laden, Antisemitism and a Viral Tweet: Why TikTok Is Facing Its Biggest Threat (Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2023)

Want to Know What’s Bedeviling Biden? TikTok Economics May Hold Clues. (New York Times, November 17, 2023) 

Nepal bans TikTok and says it disrupts social harmony (AP News, November 13, 2023)

ICYMI: WTH is Tik Tok So Dangerous? Klon Kitchen on How the Chinese Communist Party is Reading Your Keystrokes and Collecting Your Data (November 30, 2022)