A new poll from the Daily Mail states that 1 in 5 young Americans holds a positive view of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden.
The publication reported Wednesday that "1 in 5 young Americans have a positive view of Osama bin Laden and 3 in 10 believe the views of the terrorist leader who slaughtered thousands of innocent people were a 'force for good.'"
The poll, conducted by JL Partners, asked 1,000 Americans ages 18 to 29 what they thought of the man who called for holy war against the United States. However, the dates of the polling are unclear.
Despite the poll's findings, 81% of American voters said they had negative views of the terrorist leader.
JL Partners founder James Johnson told the Daily Mail, "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that there is a cancer in the American body politic: a small but sizable group of its youngest voters.
"Polling has found that 18- to 29-year-olds are most likely to deny the Holocaust, and in our October Daily Mail poll we found that Gen Z Americans are more likely to sympathize with Hamas.
"And now we have this on Osama bin Laden, the man behind the biggest attack on American soil in its history.
"A few weeks ago his writings went viral, with young Americans praising the Islamist leader. Some wrote that off as a few shrill voices on social media; others suggested it was fake."
But while the poll dates are unclear, its commission ostensibly stems from the letter that began circulating on TikTok around November under the hashtag "LettertoAmerica."
Following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, the British publication The Guardian removed the letter.
Nonetheless, traces of it still can be found online. In it, bin Laden rants that the treatment and killings of the Palestinian people and, for that matter, those in the greater Middle East had to be "revenged" in the name of jihad.
"The American people," bin Laden wrote, "are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will" and "are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq."
Brett Eagleson, who was just 15 when he lost his father in the South Tower on 9/11, thinks these poll findings really show how the U.S. government's "feckless inability" to hold parties responsible is a reason why young Americans' minds have become "perverted."
Eagleson has been on a long journey, fighting for justice for all the families who were shattered by that fateful day. And he's also been pushing hard for the U.S. to come clean about how much Saudi Arabia was involved.
"We have never been told the full story or truth about what happened to us on 9/11," he told the Mail.
"So it's no wonder why today's youth and adolescents have taken such extremist views supporting the evil that visited us that day. We have a two-decades-long government cover-up to blame for this.
"The time is past for a full accounting of the Saudi government role in 9/11 as well the intelligence failures of the U.S. government.
"The minds of this country's youth are being perverted by our government's feckless inability to be honest with itself and hold the rightful parties accountable, so we actually have a situation where a significant number of young people are praising the murder and death of our neighbors."