Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, America faces a danger that is easier to dismiss than a terrorist cell or a weapon: the normalization of rhetoric that treats hatred, political violence and even terrorism as legitimate responses to grievance.
Hasan Piker has built an enormous audience by being provocative. Years ago, he infamously declared that “America deserved 9/11,” a statement for which he later apologized and characterized as inappropriate. But the larger issue is not one comment or one personality. It is what happens when influential voices repeatedly push the boundaries of what society considers acceptable, when terrorism becomes something to rationalize, political violence becomes material for jokes, and entire groups of people become targets of contempt.
Words have consequences.
I know what terrorism looks like when it stops being rhetoric.
I was at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. I witnessed firsthand what happens when hatred is transformed into ideology, ideology into justification, and justification into action. Nearly 3,000 innocent people went to work, boarded airplanes, reported for duty or simply began an ordinary Tuesday morning and never returned home.
They did not deserve it.
America did not deserve it.
And twenty-five years later, we should not tolerate rhetoric that suggests otherwise.
This is bigger than Piker. It is bigger than left versus right, Israel versus Palestine or any political movement. Extremism does not become acceptable because we agree with the grievance that precedes it. Political violence is wrong when it targets Republicans. It is wrong when it targets Democrats. Antisemitism is wrong. Islamophobia is wrong. Racism is wrong. Celebrating terrorism is wrong.
There cannot be ideological exemptions to basic human decency.
One of the themes I have repeatedly written about is the cost of silence. Dangerous ideas rarely become mainstream overnight. The boundaries move gradually. A statement that once would have produced universal condemnation becomes controversial. Then debatable. Then defensible. Eventually, it becomes just another opinion in the public square.
That progression should concern every American.
The greatest danger is not that everyone listening to inflammatory rhetoric will become violent. Of course they will not. The danger is that among audiences numbering in the hundreds of thousands or millions, someone may hear something very differently. Someone already angry, alienated or searching for meaning may interpret the rationalization of violence as permission.
That is how radicalization works: grievance finds a narrative, the narrative identifies an enemy, the enemy becomes dehumanized, and violence begins to appear justified.
We have seen the consequences throughout history and in our own country. Hate crimes do not emerge from a vacuum. Racial and religious tensions do not spontaneously combust. Domestic terrorism does not begin with the bomb, the gun or the vehicle. Long before physical violence comes a process that teaches people whom to blame, whom to hate and, ultimately, whose humanity matters less.
That is why leaders, politicians, educators, media personalities and online influencers carry responsibilities proportional to the audiences they command.
Free speech protects the right to say offensive things. It does not require the rest of us to remain silent about them.
Indeed, protecting free speech demands something more from citizens: the willingness to answer bad ideas with better ones and hatred with moral clarity.
We should also be careful about claiming that another 9/11 could never happen. The lesson of September 11 should be precisely the opposite. Complacency is dangerous. Extremist ideologies can metastasize when societies fail to recognize warning signs or become so politically tribal that they excuse extremism from their own side.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, our obligation cannot simply be to remember what happened. We must remember how hatred becomes violence.
September 12, 2001, showed us another path.
Americans stood together across race, religion, ethnicity and political affiliation. Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, Christians, immigrants, first responders, service members and ordinary citizens were part of one national community. We were not united because we suddenly agreed about everything. We were united because something deeper than politics connected us.
Our shared humanity mattered more than our differences.
That America still exists. But we cannot wait for another catastrophe to rediscover it.
The answer to dangerous rhetoric is not censorship. It is courage. It is refusing to excuse hatred because the person expressing it happens to share our politics. It is demanding that influential voices understand that words can travel far beyond their intended audience.
Most importantly, it is remembering the lesson written in the lives of 2,977 people murdered on September 11.
Hatred must be confronted before it becomes normalized. Extremism must be challenged before it becomes action. Violence must be condemned before another family is forced to learn its cost.
We Remember So They Never Forget.
But remembrance also carries a warning:
We must never become so comfortable with the language of hatred that we fail to recognize where it can lead.
