Advertising
Supported by
The longtime candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has a history of embracing conspiracy theories. His most recent comments claimed that the virus spared some ethnic groups and devotees.
By Jonathan Weisman
A conspiracy tirade through Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the Covid-19 virus designed to save Ashkenazi Jews and the rest of the Chinese has sparked long-term accusations of anti-Semitism and racism from the Democratic presidential candidate.
“COVID-19 [woman. There is an argument that it is ethnically directed. Covid-19 is disproportionately targeting certain races,” M. Kennedy at a private rally in New York that was videotaped by the New York Post.
Mr. Kennedy made his political career with false conspiracy theories related not only to Covid-19 and Covid vaccines, but also to the refuted links between non-unusual formative years vaccines and autism, mass surveillance and 5G mobile phone technology, the adverse health effects of Wi-Fi, and a “stolen” election in 2004 that returned the presidency to George W. Bush.
But the fact that the coronavirus pandemic has spared Chinese and European-born Jews has veered into new sectarian territory.
Asian Americans suffered a series of brutal attacks early in the covid pandemic through others who accused the Chinese of deliberately spreading the virus around the world. And Mr. Kennedy’s comments about Ashkenazi Jews strike at anti-Semitic tropes on several levels.
Ashkenazi Jews are descended from those who settled in Europe after the Roman Empire destroyed the Jewish state around A. D. 70. Sephardic Jews traveled to the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain.
The concept that Ashkenazi Jews are separate from Caucasians has fueled murderous bigotry for centuries, and the conspiracy of Jewish immunity opposed to tragedy has been a component of anti-Semitic attacks since the Black Death and as recently as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Abraham Foxman, who worked for decades as director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, condemned “anti-Semitic stereotypes dating back to the Middle Ages and that Jews themselves contract diseases. “
“It can’t be ignorance because he’s not ignorant, so he has to do it,” M said. Foxman on Saturday night.
Kennedy responded to the New York Post article with a defense that deepened his conspiracy theories. He wrote on Twitter that he “accurately noted” that the U. S. is not in the U. S. The U. S. is “developing ethnically directed biological weapons,” a point he made in his videotaped comments, when he repeated Russian propaganda that the U. S. is developing biologically. The U. S. Navy collects DNA in Ukraine to target Russians with custom biological weapons.
Kennedy connected to a clinical paper that he said showed that the design of the Covid-19 virus made blacks and Caucasians more susceptible, and that “ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews” were less receptive.
But the study it linked to, published in July 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic and before the emergence of effective treatments, made no reference to Chinese being less receptive to the virus, nor did it report on how to attack the virus. He said there did not appear to be a specific receptor for the virus in Amish and Ashkenazi Jews.
His conclusions were roundly rejected by scientists.
“Consensus sequences of Jewish or Chinese proteases are one thing in biochemistry, but they are one thing in racism and anti-Semitism,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan.
Kennedy took to Twitter shortly after Sunday to call accusations of anti-Semitism against him a “disgusting fabrication. “
“I perceive the emotional pain that these distortions and erroneous fabrications have caused to many Jews who do not forget the bloody slanders of poisoned wells and the planned spread of diseases as a pretext for genocidal systems opposed to their ancestors,” he wrote in a lengthy article. “My father and uncles, John F. Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy, faithfully dedicated their political careers to supporting Israel and fighting anti-Semitism. I intend to spend my political career making those family reasons my priority.
Mr. Kennedy’s comments the first time he veered at the intersection of Judaism and covid. In his eagerness to condemn measures to stop the spread of the virus, he spoke last year at a rally against the vaccination mandate in Washington and said: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you can cross the Alps into Switzerland. He can just hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” suggesting covid restrictions were worse.
Even his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, condemned the comment about Anne Frank.
“My husband’s reference to Anne Frank at a mandatory rally in D. C. was reprehensible and insensitive,” he wrote on Twitter.
The anger of Jewish leaders over his comments on Covid is immediate.
The Anti-Defamation League wrote, “The claim that covid-19 is a biological weapon created by Chinese or Jews to target Caucasians and Blacks is deeply offensive and fuels the synophobic and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about covid-19 that we have noticed evolving over the past 3 years. “
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N. J. , wrote on Twitter: “RFK Jr. is an embarrassment to the call from Kennedy and the Democratic Party. For the record, my whole family, who is Jewish, covid. “
An earlier edition of this article indicated that an article in a clinical journal similar to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made no reference to Ashkenazi Jews. The summary in Mr. Kennedy’s link did not, the full text of the newspaper article did.
An earlier edition of this article incorrectly described one on Covid-19 cited by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He made no reference to the fact that the Chinese were less receptive to the virus (not more receptive).
How we deal with corrections
Jonathan Weisman is a Chicago-based political correspondent, veteran journalist and journalist for the novel “No. 4 Imperial Lane” and nonfiction e-book “((Semitism)): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump. “His career in journalism dates back 30 years. More information about Jonathan Weisman
I ad