What’s shocking isn’t that Kennedy voiced an anti-Jewish conspiracy, however that it took this lengthy.
Final week, at a dinner occasion in Manhattan, the Democratic main candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shared his unvarnished ideas concerning the nature of the coronavirus. “There’s an argument that it’s ethnically focused,” he defined, in remarks captured on video. “COVID-19 is focused to assault Caucasians and Black individuals. The people who find themselves most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese language.” To make sure, Kennedy added, “we don’t know whether or not it was intentionally focused or not.” In different phrases, Kennedy apparently believes it’s an open query whether or not the pandemic was engineered by a shadowy cabal to spare Chinese language and Jewish individuals.
A minimum of 1 million individuals in China have died from COVID-19; removed from being proof against the virus, Jews in locations like New York have been typically unfairly accused of spreading it. As a Jew who had his personal bout with the coronavirus, Kennedy’s claims have been information to me. However given the supply, additionally they weren’t a shock. That’s as a result of Kennedy is a conspiracy theorist, and the arc of conspiracy is brief and bends towards the Jews.
Right here is only a small sampling of what Kennedy believes: that radiation from wi-fi web causes most cancers; that chemical substances within the water provide are producing gender dysphoria; that the CIA killed each his father and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy; that antidepressants trigger right now’s mass shootings; that George W. Bush stole the 2004 presidential election; and that your telephone’s 5G connection is a part of a plot “to reap our knowledge and management our habits.”
Seen within the context of Kennedy’s profession, what’s shocking will not be his foray into anti-Semitism however that it took him this lengthy to reach right here. As I’ve written earlier than:
Anti-Semitism is arguably the world’s oldest and most sturdy conspiracy concept. It presents Jews because the string-pulling puppet masters behind the world’s political, financial, and social issues. For these searching for easy options to life’s complexities, this outlook provides a ready-made rationalization—and enemy. Anybody searching for a single supply for society’s travails could begin with run-of-the-mill conspiracy theories however will quickly find yourself parroting anti-Jewish concepts.
As a result of anti-Semitism has produced centuries of fabric pinning humanity’s issues on its Jews, an individual satisfied that an invisible hand is conducting world affairs will ultimately uncover that it belongs to an invisible Jew.
Because of this, it’s unimaginable to flow into on the conspiratorial fringe and never encounter anti-Semitism. Because of this Kennedy has continuously discovered himself within the firm of those that imagine and specific anti-Jewish concepts. Final week, he trumpeted his assembly with the rapper Ice Dice, a fellow conspiracy theorist who has a lengthy historical past of weird anti-Semitic tweets and tune lyrics. Prior to now, Kennedy has additionally made frequent trigger with the hate preacher Louis Farrakhan, who frequently rails towards alleged Jewish management of media and authorities.
That Kennedy would in the end echo the anti-Semitic assumptions of his conspiratorial cohort was inevitable. Certainly, he’s removed from the primary traveler on the well-trodden path from conspiracism to outright anti-Semitism. In recent times, people as numerous as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kyrie Irving, and Elon Musk have graduated from garden-variety conspiracy theories to anti-Jewish arguments. Even the content material of Kennedy’s COVID-19 conjecture isn’t unique: Jews have been blamed for spreading plagues for hundreds of years, most famously throughout Europe’s Black Dying.
Over the weekend, Kennedy furiously tweeted denials and clarifications, insisting that he meant solely that COVID served “as a sort of proof of idea for ethnically focused bioweapons,” not that “the ethnic impact was intentionally engineered,” although he’d clearly raised that precise risk in his unique remarks.
Kennedy himself has no prior historical past of anti-Semitism, and has by no means evinced private prejudice towards Jewish individuals. However his conspiratorial compass ensured that he would ultimately arrive at this vacation spot, as a result of it factors in just one course.
