Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades, report says
Robert Kennedy Jr, a long-shot Democratic candidate for US president, has a long history of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, and should be denied a national platform, according to a damning report seen by the Guardian.
Kennedy, who provoked anger last week when he was filmed falsely suggesting that the coronavirus could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, is due to testify at the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday.
The Congressional Integrity Project, a political watchdog, called for Republicans to disinvite Kennedy after releasing a report that details his meetings with and promotion of racists, antisemites and extremist conspiracy theorists.
“Kennedy embraces virtually every conspiracy theory in existence,” the report states. “His horrific antisemitic and xenophobic views are simply beyond the pale, and he has frequently met with and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theorists. Kennedy’s antivaccine conspiracies go back decades and have had deadly real world consequences.”
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, is running against Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary and has drawn big and enthusiastic crowds and polled as high as 20%. But the Project’s document argues that Kennedy’s recent comments about Jewish and Chinese people, which were quickly hailed by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers as “100% correct”, were not an aberration but fitted a long pattern.
Earlier this summer Kennedy touted a meeting with Ice Cube, a rapper who issued bizarre antisemitic tweets, and publicly defended musician Roger Waters, who was embroiled in controversy after donning a costume intended to evoke Nazi attire at a concert in Germany.
The report says Kennedy has also repeatedly promoted and praised fringe online broadcaster James Corbett, a Sandy Hook and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has claimed that “Hitler and the Nazis were 100% completely and utterly set up”.
Kennedy has often allied himself with the National of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, who regularly unleashed tirades about alleged Jewish control of media and government. Kennedy met Farrakhan at his Chicago home in 2015, with Farrakhan later tweeting that they discussed “a vaccine that is designed to affect Black males”.
The Project details how Kennedy himself has frequently invoked Nazi Germany when pushing debunked theories about vaccines. He put out a video that showed the infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci with a moustache reminiscent of Adolf Hitler and used the word “holocaust” to describe children he believes were hurt by vaccines in 2015.
Last year, at a Washington rally organized by his group Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy complained that people’s rights were being violated by public health measures that had been taken to reduce the number of people sickened and killed by Covid-19. He said: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” He later apologised.
For years, the document says, Kennedy has targeted a particularly dangerous form of vaccine denial at Black people. In 2021 at the height of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, he released Medical Racism, a film that promoted disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines and explicitly warned communities of color to be suspicious of “sinister” vaccination campaigns.
Several doctors and experts who participated in the film later denounced it and said they felt used and misled about the message of the documentary. Richard Allen Williams, founder of the Association of Black Cardiologists, called Children’s Health Defense “absolutely a racist operation” particularly dangerous to the Black community.
In 2017, as a measles outbreak devastated Minnesota’s Somali-American community due to low vaccination rates, Kennedy continued to push his false claims that “science and anecdotal evidence suggest that Africans and African Americans may be particularly vulnerable to vaccine injuries including autism”.
In a 2020 interview, Kennedy asserted without evidence that “People with African blood react differently to vaccines than people with Caucasian blood. They’re much more sensitive.”
The following year, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Kennedy recorded a webinar encouraging Black people to be skeptical of vaccines, claiming: “There has been abundant evidence … beyond any dispute that Blacks are disproportionately harmed by vaccine injury,” adding: “Blacks react completely differently to vaccines … we now know it’s just one huge experiment on Black Americans, and they know what is happening and they are doing nothing.”
The report also argues that, from the earliest days of Operation Warp Speed, Kennedy has built “an antivaccine juggernaut” around opposition to Covid-19 vaccinations, which he has called “the deadliest vaccine ever made”.
He has sought to frame Covid vaccines as an elaborate conspiracy to enrich the medical establishment and big pharmaceutical companies. In a YouTube video, Kennedy accused Bill Gates of developing an “injectable chip” to enable the tracking of human movements and attempting to “genetically modify” humanity to “the flow of global information”.
Kennedy has even accused his former anti-vaccine ally, Donald Trump, of selling out to Pfizer by developing vaccines.
Such anti-scientific views go way back. Kennedy has claimed that fluoridated water is “drugging” children, HIV does not cause Aids and chemicals in the water are making people gay or transgender as well as pushing nonsensical conspiracy theories about wifi and 5G cellular networks.
As the son of former attorney general Robert Kennedy, and nephew of former president John F Kennedy, Kennedy has caused anguish to one of America’s most storied political dynasties with his toxic views.
In 2019 three relatives wrote an opinion column for the Politico website condemning his anti-vaccine advocacy, which they held partially responsible for a measles outbreak.
The Congressional Integrity Project contends that Kennedy is a “Republican stooge” who is being embraced by the far right in an attempt to damage Biden. He has become a regular guest on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and other rightwing outlets. Farright provocateurs Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones and Michael Flynn have praised him.
Now Republicans have invited Kennedy to Congress. On Thursday he is due to address the House of Representatives’ select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government during a hearing to examine “the federal government’s role in censoring Americans”. The panel is chaired by the Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, who has been criticised for launching bogus investigations into Biden.
Kyle Herrig, executive director of Congressional Integrity Project, said: “Giving RFK Jr a platform to spread dangerous conspiracy theories and xenophobic and antisemitic rhetoric is a new low for Jim Jordan – and that says something.
“Jim Jordan should stop the charade and disinvite RFK Jr immediately. Allowing this hearing to go forward is shameless and beyond the pale. Maga Republicans’ desperation is on full display this week, proving once again that they have no credibility to conduct legitimate investigations.”
A 16-year-old from Guatemala died on Friday after sustaining a workplace injury at a poultry plant in Mississippi, authorities confirm.
The child, identified as Duvan Tomas Perez, died at Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, about two hours outside of Jackson, NBC News reported. He migrated to the US six years ago from the town of Huispache and was a middle school student.
The accident occurred on Friday at about 8pm central time, the Forrest county coroner, Butch Benedict, told the Guardian.
The teenager’s death was caused by workplace equipment, Benedict confirmed. Benedict added that an autopsy had been completed and details would probably be released next week.
An employee who was working at the time of the incident told NBC that he heard the boy cry for help.
“Two times he began to scream, ‘Help! Help!’” the worker said to NBC. “I knew he had died.”
Minors in Mississippi are not allowed to be employed in poultry plants. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) and the labor department have launched investigations into the boy’s death, NBC reported.
Companies in violation of labor rules could face fines of over $30,000 per incident.
Several employees have died at Mar-Jac over the years, Benedict said. Perez’s was the third death since 2020, when a 33-year old worker died after being injured at the plant, Hattiesburg American reported.
A 48-year employee also died in June 2021 after sustaining injuries from heavy machinery, the American reported.
Several US states have recently rolled back child labor protections, an effort mostly led by Republican lawmakers, despite child labor law violations increasing by 37% in 2022 and by 283% since 2015.
In May, the Iowa governor, Kim Reynolds, received widespread criticism after signing legislation overturning several child labor protections including how many hours children can work and the type of industries.
The new legislation also provides employers with exemption from liability if minors are sickened, injured or killed at work.
Such rollbacks in protections often affect migrant children who can be at an increased risk of exploitation, said Elora Mukherjee, a professor of law at Columbia Law School.
“Rather than being in school and being generously supported by the communities they’re in, many of these children are forced to work in exploitative conditions to try and support themselves and their family members,” said Mukherjee, emphasizing the need for migrant children to receive support.
Mukherjee said it was hard to pin down an exact figure on how many migrant minors are being employed illegally.
Federal investigations have been opened in at least 11 states to better understand the scope of the problem, Mukherjee added, calling those inquiries an important first step.
“It’s clearly just a first step. It’s not enough,” Mukherjee said, adding that the government should be investing more into such investigations and targeting firms and employers who are hiring migrant children.
Monetary fines that companies face for violations can also be minuscule and “not sufficient to deter child labor violations”, especially for multinational corporations who make millions in profits, Mukherjee said.
Mukherjee called the death of Duval a “tragedy” that reflects the difficult situations migrant minors face.