Hasan Piker, no one deserved 9/11

Twenty-five years after September 11, America is entering a perilous era of historical distance. New Age Democratic Influencer Hasan Piker said America deserved 9/11.

An entire generation has now come of age without a visceral memory of the attacks. For them, 9/11 is increasingly an abstraction: photographs of burning buildings, footage of collapsing towers, documentaries about the wars that followed and stories inherited from parents who remember exactly where they were that morning.

As lived experience fades into history, the people shaping that history become immensely important.

Few contemporary commentators wield as much influence over young Americans as Hasan Piker. Hasan Piker is a self-styled Democratic Socialist who is forcing Democrats to condemn traditional American values and embrace Socialism. He has millions of followers online and has been embraced by 2028 Democratic hopefuls, who are too scared to condemn him.

Piker is no longer simply an internet personality. He has become one of the most prominent voices on the American online left, with an audience that reaches millions. His influence has increasingly intersected with electoral politics, including his campaigning for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan's 2026 Democratic Senate primary. El-Sayed went on to win the Democratic nomination. Piker's reach has also put him into the orbit of the emerging 2028 Democratic presidential conversation.

That influence makes his words about September 11 worth examining.

Piker once said that America “deserved” 9/11. He later said he should have phrased the argument differently.

What does it actually mean to say that America deserved the murder of nearly 3,000 people?

At 8:46 am, American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 am, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.

At 9:37 am, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

At 9:59 am, the South Tower collapsed.

At 10:03 am, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

At 10:28 am, the North Tower collapsed.

In just 102 minutes, the United States had suffered one of the most devastating attacks in its history. Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists had hijacked four commercial aircraft and turned them into weapons. 2,977 people were murdered, representing 90 nations.

But numbers can also conceal human reality.

Did the people trapped on the upper floors of the World Trade Center deserve to jump from windows because the stairwells had become impassable?

Did the passengers aboard those four aircraft deserve to make final calls to their parents, spouses and children, knowing they might never see their families again?

Did the children aboard those planes deserve to die?

Did the firefighters and police officers who ran into the burning towers deserve to be killed while trying to save people they had never met?

Did the families waiting for loved ones who would never return deserve the phone call that followed?

The men who carried out the attacks were not simply desperate people who had been denied education or opportunity.

Osama bin Laden came from an extraordinarily wealthy Saudi family. The 19 hijackers were members of a sophisticated al-Qaeda operation that required financing, international travel, flight training, communications and meticulous planning.

It was ideology organised into murder.

They embraced a radical jihadist ideology.

And they chose America as their target.

This distinction is crucial because modern discussions of terrorism can become exercises in explaining the terrorists' grievances while losing sight of the terrorists themselves.

Yes, Osama bin Laden had grievances against American foreign policy. Those grievances are part of history and should be studied.

But an explanation is not exoneration.

Grievances do not hijack aeroplanes.

Al-Qaeda's worldview treated Americans as legitimate targets. The victims of September 11 were not primarily soldiers on a battlefield. They were office workers, airline passengers, flight attendants, firefighters, police officers and people simply going about their lives.

A data analyst at the World Trade Center was not American foreign policy.

A passenger aboard Flight 93 was not the Pentagon.

A flight attendant was not the White House.

A firefighter climbing the stairs of the North Tower was not responsible for Washington's decisions in the Middle East.

That is why saying America “deserved” 9/11 is not merely provocative rhetoric.

It asks us to look at a terrified passenger making a final call home and see American hegemony.

It asks us to look at a fallen firefighter and see foreign policy.

It asks us to look at a parent who never came home and conclude that the country had somehow earned the loss.

And collective blame is precisely what a civilised society should reject.

The tragedy did not end when the towers fell.

The 343 FDNY firefighters and paramedics who died that day were among 411 emergency workers killed on September 11.

Thousands of others survived the attacks only to spend years dealing with the consequences.

The World Trade Center Health Registry has followed more than 71,000 responders, survivors and others exposed to the disaster. Nearly two decades later, researchers found probable PTSD in 9.6% of registry participants and depression in 12.7%.

A 20-year study of World Trade Center responders found that PTSD symptoms could persist for decades; roughly one in ten responders still reported elevated symptoms two decades after the attacks.

And in 2026, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum added a seventh moment of silence to its annual commemoration—specifically to honour people who died from 9/11-related illnesses in the years after the attacks. The Memorial says thousands of responders, rescue and recovery workers and Lower Manhattan residents have died from related illnesses.

That is the part of September 11 that gets lost when the event becomes an argument about geopolitics.

The suffering did not end at 10:28 a.m.

And in empty chairs at Thanksgiving tables.

One can study the history of the Middle East. One can criticise American foreign policy. One can oppose American wars. One can believe American leaders made catastrophic decisions.

None of those positions requires believing that a mother aboard a hijacked aeroplane deserved to die.

Piker's politics and background are relevant to understanding his worldview, but they do not make him responsible for al-Qaeda's ideology, nor should his upbringing in Turkey be used as a proxy for Turkish society, where millions reject extremism, and Turkey itself has suffered terrorist attacks.

The narrower question is about American political culture.

What happens when someone who has publicly said America deserved 9/11 becomes an influential voice sought out by political campaigns and prominent politicians?

That is a question worth asking without turning it into a partisan attack.

Because the issue is bigger than Hasan Piker.

It is about whether Americans still recognise a moral boundary around the deliberate murder of civilians.

The debate over September 11 cannot begin with the wars America fought afterwards.

It must begin with what happened that morning.

Terrorists deliberately turned commercial airliners into weapons.

They deliberately targeted civilian centres.

They deliberately killed people who had never met them, never attacked them and had no control over American foreign policy.

A generation born after 9/11 deserves to understand that distinction.

It is possible to criticise the American government without blaming the American people.

It is possible to study the grievances of terrorists without adopting their moral logic.

It is possible to acknowledge America's failures without believing that America deserved to be attacked.

But its imperfections do not revoke the humanity of its citizens.

Its foreign-policy failures do not make terrorism morally defensible.

And its shortcomings do not erase the values that have allowed generations of Americans to build a free and pluralistic society.

The people who died did not deserve 9/11.

The families who lost them did not deserve 9/11.

No one deserved 9/11.- EndsPublished By: Akash ChatterjeePublished On: Sep 11, 2026 22:00 IST