RFK Jr. He continues to push the bigoted Covid conspiracy

Maybe it is how his mind works – or maybe it's the brain worms – but presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a moth to the flame of conspiracy theories. Here's another one that just doesn't seem to go away: the idea that Covid-19 was aimed at sparing Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews from the most damaging consequences.

Kennedy – whose uncle championed the science that led America to the moon – first floated the idea of ​​a moonwalk last summer at a dinner party. In comments that was captured on video and published by New York Post, Kennedy said of Covid-19: “There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted.” He further claimed that “Covid-19 aims to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that “the most immune people are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese”.

Kennedy's conspiracy theories were soon widely debunked, among others The New York Timeswhere the alustro was running news headline: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touts new Covid conspiracy theory about Jews and Chinese”. As the controversy swelled, Kennedy posted on X that he was unfairly maligned: “I never, ever suggested that the Covid-19 virus was aimed at sparing the Jews.” However, he added that Covid-19 serves as a “proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons”. Despite making the “argument” that the virus was “ethnically targeted,” Kennedy wrote that he “never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately designed.”

Fast forward to the present and Kennedy is again misinterpreting the science surrounding the deadly virus. A television station in Maine broadcast one interview last week he characterized Kennedy as “doubling down” on his original conspiracy sentiment, showing a video of Kennedy insisting: “This is a scientific study. It's not a racist statement. It's just the truth.”

This news segment, with Maine News Center reporter Donovan Lynch, is pretty condensed. Rolling rock has reviewed the unedited video of the exchange, in which Kennedy appears combative and unrepentant. Lynch presented Kennedy with his earlier remarks and asked, “Do you still believe what you said?” He also pressed Kennedy on the trafficking of an anti-Semitic trope.

At first Kennedy shied away, wailing: “The irony is that at the same time I'm being called an anti-Semite — which, of course, is a joke — I'm also being called a Zionist. So someone has to decide.”

Kennedy then insisted, “All I did was report an NIH [National Institutes of Health] Funded paper that anyone can look up… that was funded by the United States government… that showed that certain races were more susceptible.” Kennedy elaborated: “The races he was least compatible with were people from Finland. The second were the Ashkenazi Jews. The third most were Chinese nationals. It was more compatible with Blacks, with people from Africa and with Caucasians.” Kennedy added as a warning: “There are ethnically targeted bio-weapons. I never said Covid was one of them.”

Science is never really the issue with Kennedy, who often misinterprets research studies to support dark, prejudiced ideas. But the paper states that it makes no mention of genetic targeting of Covid-19. He notes that “potentially harmful variants” of a gene called ACE2 appear to make certain populations more susceptible to the virus.

Such variants, it is true, are disproportionately found in Africans and Afro-Americans as well as in “Non-Finnish European” populations. However, the study does not refer to “Chinese nationals” at all. He notes that a broad group of Latinos, East Asians and South Asians are less likely to carry the susceptible genetic variants. (Contra Kennedy, Finns are also in this group.) Finally, he notes that these genetic vulnerabilities are not seen in either Ashkenazi or Amish Jews.

Of course a conspiracy theory focusing on the resistance to the coronavirus by Ecuadorians and the Pennsylvania Dutch is not as explosive as one involving Chinese and Jews. In particular, it would not resonate with widespread, bigoted tropes that blame Beijing for unleashing Covid-19 on the world, nor with those that mistakenly see Jews as leading a globalization served by this “great reset.”

The Kennedy campaign did not respond to specific questions from Rolling rock on why Kennedy is so stubborn in falsifying the science of Covid. Instead, a campaign spokesman pointed to a second recent one paper clip with the nominee on The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur from June 17.

In this clip, Kennedy portrays himself as a victim of mainstream media “spin” designed to “make me look crazy.” He complained that his initial comments about 2023 should be off the record and that he “never suggested that humans deliberately developed or cultivated Covid as a bio-weapon against certain races”.

And yet Kennedy continued to refute the NIH research, again falsely claiming the superiority of Finnish immunity to the disease. Kennedy ended up with the conspiracy theorist's last resort, which is to only raise questions. “I didn't guarantee the paper,” he said. “I was just saying: It's interesting that this is out there.”