Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks, I remember 9/11 as if it were yesterday. Although I can't remember dates to save my life, I can name things I did just before or just after that day because 9/11 is an anchor that is seared into my mind.
I'm sure that's true for everybody I know. For those of us who were adults or teens at the time, there was a pre-9/11 America and a post-9/11 America. For the generation before us, it was the Kennedy assassination; for us, it was 9/11.
On 9/11/01, ABC NEWS's Peter Jennings showed Americans the footage of Palestinians celebrating the attacks. Palestinian men, women, and children cheering. Dancing. Smiling. Clapping. Honking horns. Flashing peace signs. In Cairo, they chanted "Mabrook" (Congratulations in… https://t.co/paJSgJRkOe
— Michael LaRosa (@MichaelLaRosaDC) September 7, 2026
On 9/11/01, ABC NEWS's Peter Jennings showed Americans the footage of Palestinians celebrating the attacks. Palestinian men, women, and children cheering. Dancing. Smiling. Clapping. Honking horns. Flashing peace signs. In Cairo, they chanted "Mabrook" (Congratulations in Arabic). 🔻
JENNINGS: "Other Palestinians, "..." will be happy to see this attack on the U.S. today. So, take a look at a scene from Jerusalem not too long ago, in which there is some celebration that the powerful United States has been harmed, has been seen to be vulnerable, has been hurt."
Among the things I remember was the outbreak of celebration among Muslims both here and in the Middle East; as Americans suffered and grieved, Muslims declared their enmity and joy at our pain. Palestinians were the most vocal about their joy, but they were hardly alone.
🚨 Abdul El-Sayed in unearthed audio:
— Bobby LaValley (@Bobby_LaVallley) September 8, 2026'
"9/11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people."
"When we talk about 9/11, we often fail to center them." pic.twitter.com/Xa8XOY2Tdb
That's one of the many reasons why it is so jarring to see so many Americans today embrace the revisionist history that the true victims of 9/11 were not the over 3,000 victims who died that day, nor the country as a whole, which remains scarred today by this vicious act of hatred, but Muslims who have, we are told, been heaped with scorn and hatred.
Never Forget, to this:
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) September 6, 2026
“Teaching Beyond September 11th” — a radical retelling of 9/11 that devotes a single paragraph to the horrific attacks and fails to refer to the murderous Islamic extremists as terrorists — focuses lessons on “Right-Wing Extremism” and “Islamophobia and… https://t.co/np2q66gDhP
The narrative from the sinister side of the aisle (isn't it appropriate that "sinister" is the Latin word for "left"?) is that Americans are Islamophobic just because Muslims declare daily that they want us dead or converted, for Islam to become the law of the land, and that Western Culture must be destroyed and replaced with an ideology that takes us back to medieval barbarity.
El-Sayed was followed by imam Zaid Shakir, a 9/11 truther who said in his speech that members of Congress who voted for the IHRA anti-Semitism bill were "guilty of treason."
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) September 8, 2026
New York City is governed by an Islamist; imams regularly preach America's destruction, and the Palestinian "cause" is the most salient political force on the Left.
It's always funny when the word "controversial" has nothing to do with whether the claim is true or false, but instead with whether it offends people who have no business getting offended. https://t.co/8jLhiIhoIQ
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) September 8, 2026
There is an irony here that many people don't appreciate: this excessive sympathy toward Muslim ideology is a product of a 25-year campaign with the successful goal of convincing Americans that the very people who committed the worst atrocities on American soil in the past century and a half are the real victims.
Only 6 days after 9/11, Bush, accompanied by CAIR and other Islamic leaders, visited a mosque and said, “Islam is peace.”
— Dr. Maalouf (@realMaalouf) September 7, 2026
Since then, America has imported 4 million Muslims. 80% of all Muslims in America are the result of the post-9/11 decision to increase Islamic immigration. pic.twitter.com/x4CvzNr79V
There are no solid numbers, but the numbers indicate that the majority of American Muslims in the United States are either post-9/11 immigrants or their descendants. Far from suffering from a backlash, our establishment went out of its way to ensure that Muslims were welcomed with open arms and treated as victims of the attack.
The media has been writing this story every year since 2001. pic.twitter.com/7oaxdrXpV4
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) September 6, 2026
Americans, they feared, would become savages and seek revenge against American Muslims, so we endured endless lectures about Islam being the "religion of peace," despite all the evidence to the contrary. Islamophobia has been treated as a scourge, despite the evidence showing that, if anything, Muslims are treated as especially "American" and valuable as immigrants.
One hilarious takeaway from polling data is that doing terrorism is generally good for your group's favorability: After 9/11, American opinion of Muslims massively improved — and likewise after Charlie Hebdo in France.
— Werner Zagrebbi🇦🇿 (@zagrebbi) September 7, 2026
Claims that the media is biased against Muslims are absurd. https://t.co/ygpp0KlfZ7 pic.twitter.com/adH0EPuKyN
CAIR made an official recommendation to NJ public schools that students study the writing of Osama Bin Laden on 9/11.
Let's be clear -- CAIR is a terrorist organization that should not be allowed to operate in the United States. They are the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and their leadership should be rounded up and expelled from the country.
Like Osama Bin Laden, their goal is to destroy the United States.
It's funny that the people who go apoplectic over AIPAC, a relatively conventional lobbying organization, don't ever have anything to say about CAIR, a truly reprehensible group with foreign funding, significant terror ties, and its hands in government operations nationwide.
The propaganda campaign has worked. Muslims have outsized political power, mosques filled with lecturers describing how evil America is and how Islam and Sharia are America's future, and entire cities are now governed by Muslims who make clear they are hostile to Americans and American values.
One hilarious takeaway from polling data is that doing terrorism is generally good for your group's favorability: After 9/11, American opinion of Muslims massively improved — and likewise after Charlie Hebdo in France.
— Werner Zagrebbi🇦🇿 (@zagrebbi) September 7, 2026
Claims that the media is biased against Muslims are absurd. https://t.co/ygpp0KlfZ7 pic.twitter.com/adH0EPuKyN
Feminist governors rush to be photographed speaking to conservative Muslims garbed in hijabs, speaking before sexually segregated gatherings where women are treated as second-class citizens. It is jarring to see, but by now so common that a campaign isn't complete without a Democrat groveling before crowds of hostile Muslims who are laughing at how weak and stupid these Americans are.
TERRIFYING: The Shia Muslim mosque of Dearborn, Michigan, pledged its allegiance to the Islamic Regime in Iran, calling the U.S. a nation of ‘Devil-worshipers.’
— Dr. Maalouf (@realMaalouf) September 1, 2026
“America was built by Devil-worshipers. The Statue of Liberty represents Lucifer.
Ayatollah Khamenei was the… pic.twitter.com/Cd8b9ecBht
TERRIFYING: The Shia Muslim mosque of Dearborn, Michigan, pledged its allegiance to the Islamic Regime in Iran, calling the U.S. a nation of ‘Devil-worshipers.’
“America was built by Devil-worshipers. The Statue of Liberty represents Lucifer.
Ayatollah Khamenei was the greatest leader of our time. We want our children to grow up with a jihad culture!”
The enemy within.
There has not been an anniversary of 9/11 without constant lectures about how Muslims are the real victims of 9/11, and there is no example of the power of propaganda more than the fact that this campaign has worked on, at least, a significant portion of the country, and perhaps the majority.
In the great Venn Diagram of life, I would guess that the overlap between those who were convinced by the COVID hysterics and those who embrace Muslims in the West is near 100 percent.
These same people are the ones who look the other way when Somalis pillage our public purse, pour out sympathy for illegal aliens who rape and murder, and who are voting for the socialists who proudly assert that their goal is the destruction of the United States.
I'm not certain how we break the spell for these people, save by destroying the institutions that do the propaganda. They are, if not the ultimate problem, which is the susceptibility of many people to propaganda, the penultimate cause of our problems.
Obviously, there is no cure for human fallibility, and incoherent rage against our enemies has its own problems, but cultural suicidality is the danger we face today.
As we have seen over the past few years, there is a large faction in our country that is determined, either consciously or by its willingness to embrace people determined to destroy our culture, which has put us on a path to decline and eventual fall.
Ben Franklin famously said that the Constitutional Convention had adopted a Republican form of government, but it would be up to all of us to ensure we could keep it. I fear that unless we reverse the psychological disease that has come to characterize a significant fraction of our population, we will not be able to keep it.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy HotAir's conservative reporting exposing the radical left and woke media? Support our work so we can keep bringing you the truth.
Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member