For those of us who are old enough to remember where we were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, it is hard to believe that 25 years have passed.
asserted
years → remember → Sept.
On this anniversary, I can’t help but wonder what Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind those infamous terrorist attacks, would make of the world today.
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Laden → help → world
Bin Laden knew he could not defeat the United States by conventional military means, but he could terrorize, demoralize and try to persuade the West that it did not deserve to win.
uncertain
it → know → West
In his 2002 “Letter to the American People,” alongside the expected demands about Muslim lands and Israel, he attacked Americans for usury, drugs, gambling and sexual licence, blamed them for AIDS, denounced corporate money in election campaigns, condemned the atomic bombing of Japan and reproached Washington for refusing to sign the Kyoto accord.
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he → attack → accord
As the Hudson Institute’s Paul Marshall has observed, bin Laden had spent a decade issuing statements that mentioned none of these things.
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that → observe → things
But in this letter, bin Laden submerged his theology and borrowed the West’s own case against itself, attempting to appeal to western audiences through their own grievances.
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Laden → submerge → grievances
The gambit failed in 2002.
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gambit → fail → 2002
But 25 years after 9/11, we seem to have become much more receptive to the case bin Laden was trying to make against the West.
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Laden → seem → West
The West now instructs its own children to hold it in contempt.
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West → instruct → contempt
Its classrooms, newsrooms and cultural institutions run a permanent seminar on western sin, while non-western societies whose conduct is immeasurably worse are treated as victims and granted a standing exemption from judgment.
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conduct → run → judgment
Hudson Institute researcher Zineb Riboua calls this ideology “Third-Worldism”: the belief that world politics is fundamentally divided between a dominating North and a dominated South, with conflicts understood through the binary of colonizer and colonized.
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politics → call → colonizer
The categories carry their own moral verdict: those assigned the status of oppressed are granted legitimacy, while those deemed powerful are presumed guilty, regardless of who is actually exercising power or perpetuating oppression in a particular conflict.
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who → carry → conflict
Changing sympathies towards Israel is where the growing Third-Worldism is easiest to see.
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Worldism → change → Israel
For most of this century, Americans overwhelmingly sympathized with Israel over Palestinians: according to Gallup, between 2001 and 2018, “Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies, with the gap averaging 43 points.”
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gap → sympathize → points
Today, a plurality of Americans sympathize with the Palestinians.
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plurality → sympathize → Palestinians
Among Democrats, 65 per cent now sympathize with the Palestinians and just 17 per cent with Israel.
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cent → sympathize → Israel
And independents have crossed over, too.
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independents → cross → ?
Last year, they favoured Israel by eight points; today they favour the Palestinians by 11.
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they → favour → 11
But Riboua’s point is that the argument does not stop there.
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argument → stop → ?
Anyone persuaded that Israel is a colonial imposition has already accepted the premise that convicts the United States, Canada and every other western country.
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that → persuade → States
For bin Laden, a worldview that cast his enemies as oppressors and their adversaries as victims would have been an extraordinary gift.
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that → cast → victims
Antisemitism normalized
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Antisemitism → normalize → ?
Jew-hatred is foundational to Islamist ideology, and bin Laden did not conceal it.
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Laden → conceal → it
The fatwa he issued in February 1998, three years before the attacks, was titled “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.”
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he → issue → Jews
It ruled that killing Americans and their allies, civilian and military, was a duty for every Muslim able to do it, anywhere in the world, “in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque (Mecca) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.
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armies → rule → Muslim
It is not hard to imagine that bin Laden would have loved the October 7 attacks in Israel and the world’s reaction to it.
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Laden → imagine → it
Around 6,000 Gazans invaded the Israeli border, resulting in the rapes, kidnappings and murders of Jewish families in their homes and at a music festival.
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Gazans → invade → festival
And the celebrations in western cities came within hours.
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celebrations → come → hours
Antisemitism has permeated western life.
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Antisemitism → permeate → life
The J7 task force, covering seven countries that contain the majority of the Jewish diaspora, documented more than 23,000 antisemitic incidents in 2025.
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that → cover → 2025
In comparison to 2021, the number of total antisemitic incidents had risen 137 per cent, while violent incidents rose 78 per cent.
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incidents → rise → incidents
America’s enemies understand the power of this hatred better than we do.
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we → understand → hatred
As Eliana Aiken, a policy fellow at Defense Technology Alliance, has documented, Russia, Iran and China have found since October 7 that antisemitism is an especially effective weapon for weakening the United States from within, through information warfare aimed at American opinion.
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antisemitism → document → opinion
Antisemitism works so well because it can be attached to almost any grievance, offering people across the political spectrum a single culprit for otherwise unrelated frustrations.
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it → work → frustrations
It is therefore effective on the far right and the far left, particularly among people who feel the American system has failed them and are looking for a convenient scapegoat.
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system → feel → scapegoat
In the month after October 7, Kremlin-linked Telegram channels posted about the Israel-Gaza war 9,000 times and drew 865-million views, according to Aiken.
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channels → link → Aiken
At its peak, Israel-related content on American TikTok was 98.6 per cent anti-Israel.
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content → relate → TikTok
The strategic goal need not even be hatred for its own sake, as long as America no longer trusts its institutions, no longer believes its power abroad is legitimate and no longer coheres enough to defend anything.
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power → trust → anything
Aiken’s warning is ultimately strategic: if Americans can be turned against one another, America’s adversaries can prevail without confronting it militarily.
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adversaries → turn → it
Bin Laden needed 19 men and four aircraft to weaken the West.
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Laden → need → West
…and 62 more, not listed.
The Aporia
