George Takei  🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽Nov 17, 2023
Young people fall for online garbage less than we older folks do. But just in case, if some one wants you to read Osama Bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” and you think it’s cool or okay in any way, please put the social medias down, go outside and breathe, and think about your life and your choices more wisely.
Show threadmyrmepropagandist

@georgetakei

This is a fake moral panic. (with real jerks getting in on it to make it seem more real.)

Teens are not and did not.

(be very wary of stories that suggest that large numbers of young people have suddenly lost their minds... anymore so than the base rate among all age groups that have.)

Nov 18, 2023 at 2:51amWeb
Show threadapophisNov 18, 2023
@futurebird @georgetakei when i was a teenager we had a full unabridged translation of Mein Kampf in the school library and nobody thought anything of it

the *reason why* OBL's letter is going viral now is that it and anything like it have been suppressed and hidden from young Americans for so long that the few real points amidst the Jew-hating fundamentalist stuff end up hitting people unexpectedly like a sudden deep revelation of unspeakable glorious truth

after 9/11 that letter should have been *required reading* for high schoolers
Show threadapophisNov 18, 2023
@futurebird @georgetakei it's the same old story that's happened all my life

> some bad person does something bad
> the authorities refuse to let you see anything from that person's point of view
> nobody's allowed to talk about that person except to say how bad they are
> one day you suddenly chance upon that bad person's own words
> the bad person turns out not to be a cartoon monster but actually has a point in there somewhere
> you've been lied to all your life about this guy
> you're sent on a big reading binge to try to find out more about the bad guy's POV
> the authorities put on a surprised pikachu face