Was The Unabomber One Of Those “Very Fine People”?

Without a doubt in my mind, the most debated, talked about, and discussed quote from the Donald Trump administration so far was his response to the Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. For those who forgot, the President said:

Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves — and you had some very bad people in [the rally], but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

Of course, a number of people took this to mean that he thought the white nationalists were very fine people, even though he clearly meant a small group of protesters. However, Unite The Right was a pre-planned event organized by Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer — two of the leading white nationalists. Basically, anyone heading to the rally just to protest could have figured out that might not be the best day by doing a simple Google search.

For that matter, can anyone find footage of any of these “very fine people” just protesting the removal of a statue I keep hearing about? Most of the footage taken involves people shouting “blood and soil,” (a Nazi slogan) “Jews will not replace us,” and “death to the Jews.” It’s been almost three years and I have yet to see any evidence these mystical “very fine people” just peacefully protesting the removal of a statue of a Confederate general who fought to keep people enslaved (and was against making statues of himself) put up in 1917.

At Unite The Right, three people died and at least thirty three were injured. These were not “very fine people.” Although, what would I call them?

These aren’t people. These are animals.

Yes, that!

But seriously, the second quote comes from 2018 and is about — well, we’ll give the President the benefit of the doubt and say the brutal gang MS-13. However, notice how the President promised us that a gang of domestic terrorists engaging in a riot had some “very fine people,” — when the domestic terrorists in question were white.

I think that’s the thing that bothered me the most of the “animals” comment, if somebody said that MS-13 had some “very fine people” they would be attacked to hell and back. However, a gang of white nationalists kill a few people and injure tens of others — clearly that’s just some bad apples in a peaceful protest.

Anyway, now let’s talk about the Unabomber. Specifically, a fan of her by the name of Cassandra Fairbanks, who currently writes for the right-wing website The Gateway Pundit.

For those who do not know, here’s what she said in a Twitter livestream the day before yesterday:

I’m gonna read some Ted because I can’t sleep and there’s nothing else to do, and it’s really good and it applies to the [social media] mobs that we’ve seen today, especially, because there’s been quite a few.

The “Ted” being talked about, for the record, was the terrorist Ted Kaczynski who killed three people and injured another twenty-three. When asked why she was reading and recommending the manifesto of a domestic terrorist, Fairbanks told Right Wing Watch:

It’s a really interesting manifesto. Highly recommend . . . He was a brilliant man, which unfortunately drove him mad and lead to him committing evil acts.

Fairbanks has also taken to Twitter to defend herself. Now, a good amount of her defense has been going on this crusade against banned books — which I could not agree with her more on. However, despite my agreement with her, this is her backpedaling from her previous position — that the Unabomber was just a genius man.

Here is a list of killers who were just “complex individuals,” “victims of society,” or “mentally disturbed.” See if you can notice something they all share:

• Ted Kaczynski
• Timothy McVeigh
• Eric Harris
• Dylan Klebold
• Adam Lanza
• Elliot Rogers
• Charles Manson

Notice anything — colorful, we’ll say, about all those people?

White terrorists are treated with kid gloves by society, there’s no way around that. Imagine if Barack Obama had said that Black Lives Matter had some “very fine people” after some of them murdered a police officer in 2016. Instead, he was forced to remain mostly silent on the movement, outside of some basic condemnations of police brutality, out of fear he’d create a race war.

Imagine, if you will, if someone like Hasan Piker had, during a stream, started reading out sections of a book by Osama Bin Laden and said that, while he thinks 9/11 was wrong, Bin Laden was one smart cookie. We’d never hear the end of it, yet, popular right-wing commentators are just allowed to praise a murderer because he was anti-tech (and white).

You might remember Elliot Rogers, the right-wing terrorist who shot up a sorority because women wouldn’t sleep with him. The man who gave us this great quote:

One day incels will realise their true strength and numbers, and will overthrow this oppressive feminist system. Start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.

The response of most anti-feminists and right-wing types was to say that Rogers was just mentally disturbed and therefore not their fault. Meanwhile, incels kept calling him “Saint Elliot,” and another shooter, Alek Minassian, praised Rogers before killing ten people in 2018.

After Alexandre Bissonnette killed six people and injured nineteen during the Quebec City Mosque Shooting in 2017, the imminent reaction of groups like Rebel Media was that it had to be a Muslim. This went on for days until the shooter was revealed to be a right-wing terrorist who hated Muslims, which was obviously a cover up because we didn’t know about it sooner.

Again, imagine if somebody said this about an African-American terrorist.

Antia Dunn was fired from the Obama Administration’s Communication Director because she praised Chairman Mao. Bill Maher got his show Politically Incorrect cancelled because he said that the terrorists who did the 9/11 attacks were not cowards. And I could go on and on and on. The fact is, if anyone treated a non-white terrorist the way Fairbanks talked about the Unibomber, they would be viewed as a horrible human being.

My question is this, why should it be any different for white terrorists? Terrorism apologetics is terrorism apologetics — it doesn’t matter what race the terrorist is. Nobody should be engaging in apologetics for terrorism, regardless of what race the terrorist is.