Whatever is going on in America’s education system is not working. Young people are discovering Osama bin Laden on TikTok and it’s sickening.

How can it be that young Americans are so ignorant? Surely the events of 9/11/01 are taught in schools, I thought. That is not a given. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have fixed that. Florida K-12 students will receive at least 45 minutes of instruction on the history and significance of that day. It will be covered in middle and high school public schools. Teachers are encouraged to use age-appropriate resources. The day will be known as 9/11 Heroes Day in Florida schools. DeSantis is the only Republican presidential candidate who attended the 9/11 memorial service this year in New York. It makes a difference to have a veteran running for office.

TikTok videos are showing young women who claim to have fan-girl-type reactions after reading bin Laden’s Letter to America. I don’t do TikTok but it’s what I see online. It’s enough to turn stomachs. We’ve always had a blame-America-first crowd in this country, especially among Democrats (remember Obama’s time in office?) but this is a new level of wrong.

Most are probably too young to have been born in 2001. That means our education system is failing them badly. It is also a failure of parents to educate their children.

TikTok has taken it down now. It went viral and people began to complain. Rightly so. This is China stirring the pot 22 years later to divide Americans. Did this video just randomly emerge on TikTok as Americans are rioting in the streets over the Israel-Hamas war? It’s fuel to the fire. This is how the CCP reaches young people.

“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTok said in a message posted on X/Twitter. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”

The platform, however, disputed the extent to which the videos went viral, calling reports of them trending as “inaccurate.”

“This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media,” the company said.

TikTok referred to a post from journalist Yashar Ali, who on Wednesday alerted the presence of the videos on the platform.

“The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Many of them say that reading the letter has opened their eyes, and they’ll never see geopolitical matters the same way again,” Ali wrote.

Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism. We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform. The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our… https://t.co/n9Zo7l94r2

— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) November 16, 2023

Jewish Hollywood celebrities participated in a call with TikTok and ripped them a new one.

On a call with TikTok about combatting anti-Semitism on the platform held this week, “Borat” actor Sacha Baron Cohen slammed the platform for hosting “’the biggest anti-Semitic movement since the Nazis,” telling TikTok execs, “Shame on you!”

Actress Debra Messing demanded the platform immediately remove all mentions of the phrase “From the river to the sea,” a Palestinian call for the annihilation of Israel and the extermination of the Jews, adding that TikTok has become “the main platform for the dissemination of Jew hate.”

TikTok declined her request, saying they’d only remove posts with the phrase if it was obvious the poster meant it as a call to violence. “Casual” mentions, on the other hand, will be allowed to remain.

It’s good to see celebrities on the right side of an issue for a change.

9/11 families called out TikTok, too.

“No American should ever not know Osama bin Laden was a terrorist who helped mastermind the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans on September 11, 2001,” Terry Strada, national chairwoman of 9/11 Families United, said in a statement on Friday. “These Americans were our husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. It is appalling to witness younger Americans voicing sympathy for bin Laden’s dangerous and antisemitic worldview 22 years after our nation was horrifically attacked and our loved ones were callously murdered by Islamists who were financially supported by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and at Osama bin Laden’s direction.”

“We strongly encourage these Americans who are not old enough to remember the brutality of 9/11 to seek out reliable sources to educate themselves instead of forming their misguided opinions based on false TikTok videos. We also call on TikTok to stop allowing its platform to be used to promote terrorist propaganda,” Strada continued.

Yep.