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Renewed calls for TikTok ban for ‘pushing terrorist propaganda on American kids’

November 18, 2023 | | Print Article

Republican lawmakers are once again calling on the federal government to ban TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media app that caters to young users, after sympathetic reactions to Osama bin Laden’s post-9/11 “Letter to America” went viral.

Not surprisingly, the al-Qaeda terrorist blamed the devastating attacks on the United States — a fact that shook Gen Z to their vacuous cores.

TikTokers rushed to record themselves claiming such nonsense as “I feel like I’m going through, like, an existential crisis right now” and “We’ve been lied to our entire lives.”

The solution to the spread of GenZ’s misplaced sympathy, according to GOP lawmakers, is to ban TikTok.

“We should ban it,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Sean Hannity Thursday. “It tracks everything you do on your phone. It tracks everywhere you go, every text message you send, every email you write, and it’s — all that information — all of it’s available to the Chinese Communist Party.”

“It’s an espionage tool,” Hawley argued. “It’s a propaganda machine, and we ought to ban it.”

“It’s outrageous that Chinese Communist Party controlled TikTok is pushing terrorist propaganda on American kids,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote on X. “This toxic app should have been banned years ago.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, called the surge in sympathy for bin Laden “absolutely disgusting.”

“For someone on TikTok to somehow suggest that this is America’s fault, or that Bin Laden, who killed thousands of innocent Americans, was right, is absolutely disgusting and further evidence that we need to ban TikTok or force a sale before a Chinese-controlled app, before the Chinese Communist Party checkmates the free world by controlling the dominant media platform in America that can spread this dangerous, disgusting nonsense.” Gallagher told Fox News on Thursday, “It is time for a ban or forced sale before it is too late.”


While few right-thinking Americans are comfortable with the CCP flooding our nation’s youths with propaganda, some on X note that the right to say stupid things is one that a lot of other Americans have died to protect.

“Hey Mike, civic lesson time,” wrote one user in response to Gallagher’s remarks. “We have freedoms in America and viewing Tic Tok [sic], like it or not, is one of those things many Americans enjoy.”

“Countless patriots have given their lives to preserve these freedoms,” the user stated. “It’s about freedoms, not Bin Laden, Tic Tok or misguided fools.”

 

Melissa Fine
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