Because it isn't true.
"in my opinion I don't see it any less safe than languages that don't have automatic memory management"
Strawman ... the comment was about scripting languages.
"and/or languages like Rust"
Then it would be unwise to pay any attention to your opinion.
Did you not see the other person who just said that?
> Strawman ... the comment was about scripting languages.
I do not have a clue what you are trying to say...
Note: these unsafe features have two purposes. One is to interface with C/C++ code. The other is to be able to write close-to-the-metal code in Nim rather than in C (where you wouldn't gain any safety by using C, but lose the expressiveness of Nim). This is, for example, how Nim's GC is itself written in Nim.
None of the unsafe features are necessary for high-level programming, i.e. unless you actually want to operate that close to the metal.