Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Politico/AFP/Getty.
As you may know Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the only serious Democrat running against Joe Biden, is caught up in an anti-Semitism row. Predictably, all the usual suspects condemned RFK Jr., along with members of his own family and the White House. So what did RFK say? Listen for yourself:
If you are unwilling or unable to watch the video RFK Jr. claims that there has been work done to target bioweapons based on racial and ethnic genetic groups. He also said that Covid appears to target people by race with Whites and Black being more susceptible to the disease than Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews. He also raised the possibility that both US and Chinese biolabs are engaged on ethnically targeting bioweapons.
So, was any of this true? It's very hard to tell. I do think it is possible to create a bioweapon that would target people based on their genetics but I haven't seen evidence that this is actually happening. And even if it did there isn't evidence that Covid was targeted that way and it's also not clear that the Coronavirus that escaped was designed as an actual bioweapon.
The other problem is that I don't think I have heard that Whites and Blacks are more susceptible to the disease in the first place. Everything I have heard about the virus is that age and infirmity is what the Coronavirus targets, not your race. And the theory would have to account for the fact that Africa had some of the best survival rates for the pandemic while China had some of the worst.
In general I think this is the kind of thing that RFK Jr. does. He really is a conspiracy theorist when it comes to vaccines. He isn't just opposed to vaccine mandates and the Coronavirus vaccines in particular, which there is a strong argument for, but basically all vaccines. Is there a chance he is right here? I doubt it, there just isn't the evidence to support the kind of grand conspiracy theory that there are ethnically targeted bioweapons out there.
But is this anti-Semitism? Not at all. If anything it's anti-Chinese, since they are the ones who RFK suggested made the virus (which, to be fair, they actually did, everyone believes it's a lab leak now). He did say that Jews are less susceptible to the Coronavirus but that may even be true and also doesn't really suggest that they were spared on purpose. All he did was mention Jews being more resistant.
Will this hurt RFK? Not among his supporters. The powers that be already hated him largely because of his vaccine stance and the fact that he is going up against Joe Biden, so that's status quo ante. RFK's supporters largely are opposed to vaccines and aren't going to care if he makes statements like this since many of them believe the same things.
But it may prevent him from overtaking Biden. Democrats seem especially vulnerable to these kinds of attacks and it may prevent more mainstream Democrats from supporting him. And accusations of anti-Semitism are extremely powerful among the mainstream, it's only on the fringes of the right and left where they are less important.
Regardless, something like this was always going to happen with RFK. With him being an outsider in the Democratic Party he was either going to have to play the role of designated loser, like Bernie Sanders did in 2020 and 2016, or he was going to be destroyed. His comments here were just the opening they needed to move on RFK and it may be enough
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