After 9/11, everyone promised to “Never Forget.” The surge of patriotism that rose from the wreckage in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon was remarkable, albeit short-lived. Somewhere along the line, a large swath of Americans did, in fact, forget. And you know what side of the aisle did the forgetting.
Of course, we’ve been saying as much on the right for years. But this week there was criticism from the left, when Bill Maher marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11 on his show. He spent it calling out everyone who has spent the last quarter-century pretending not to remember who did the killing: the left. His own side.
Maher opened by thanking the Americans who kept the country safe for 25 years after the attacks, then pointed out how much has changed since. "Back then we were against the terrorists," he said.
Maher walked through exactly how the country got there. He noted how four journalism associations issued guidance telling reporters that "terrorism should only be used in quotes because it's emotionally and politically loaded. He also cited Canada's state media CBC, which instructs reporters, "Do not refer to the September 11th attacks as terrorist attacks," and the BBC, which told its own staff the word "terrorist" can be "a barrier rather than an aid to understanding."
It would be funny if it weren’t true.
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That refusal to name the enemy, Maher argued, is a symptom of something much bigger: the American left quietly switching sides in a fight it once understood perfectly well. He framed the post-9/11 world as a genuine clash of civilizations between radical Islamism and Western liberalism, and pointed out how many people who call themselves liberal have ended up rooting for a side that hates freedom of religion, hates gay people and treats women as property.
"How did liberals wind up on their side?" he asked.
Is it a fair question? You bet it is.
And there’s no use in pretending that this isn’t exactly what’s happening. In fact, as Maher pointed out, 20% of young Americans now hold a positive view of Osama bin Laden, whom he dubbed “Luigi Mangione in a turban."
Maher tied that moral confusion directly to Gaza and to the leftists who have made it their current cause. He tore into the casual use of the word "genocide," calling it "an easily provable lie.” And yet he backed it up with facts that leftist activists conveniently ignore: Israel moved 94,000 truckloads carrying more than 1.8 million tons of aid into Gaza, and let more than 36,000 patients leave for treatment abroad.
Let’s be honest, what Maher was really describing was a party that has decided a terrorist regime deserves the benefit of the doubt America itself never gets.
Gaza was just the pretext.
Maher's deeper point is that toppling the systems that built the West is the actual leftist project, and Gaza happens to be this new fashionable excuse for it. He called it the Democrat Party's worst moment since it abandoned Reconstruction.
It’s sad that this is what has become of the left. The 9/11 attacks were awful, but what the left is doing to this country is worse, because it’s coming from within.
The prevailing view of so much of the young left in America is that we’re the worst country ever, so if someone attacks us, they can’t be all bad. pic.twitter.com/u01HsCRnv3
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) September 12, 2026
Twenty-five years ago, honesty about who attacked this country wasn’t controversial. Maher's monologue was a rare reminder from inside liberal media that a terrorist is a terrorist, no matter how uncomfortable the label makes the snowflakes in the media or the Democrat Party.
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