Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was caught on camera spouting antisemitic COVID-19 conspiracies regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and Jewish people at a press event. The footage was obtained and released by the New York Post on July 15.
Kennedy, the nephew of former US president John F. Kennedy, claimed that COVID-19 was a bioweapon that had been specifically engineered to impact white and black people, but to spare both Jewish and Chinese.
VIDEO: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims coronavirus was an "ethnically targeted" bioweapon designed to be more deadly for caucasians and blacks — and spare Jews and Chinese https://t.co/xfAdovs0sY pic.twitter.com/og4xHdKs7x
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) July 15, 2023
“There is an argument that [COVID-19] is ethnically targeted," says Kennedy in the video. "COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” he added.
Despite Kennedy’s claims that Ashkenazi Jews had a higher immunity to COVID-19, in June of 2020, the Office for National Statistics released data revealing Jews had a higher mortality rate from COVID-19 in the United Kingdom compared to other ethnic groups. At the peak of the pandemic, in April 2020, Jewish mortality from COVID-19 was twice that of non-Jews.
Kennedy went on to claim that a future pandemic could be expected with a “50% infection fatality rate” that would make COVID-19 “look like a walk in the park.”
“We do know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons,” he claimed. “They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”
Kennedy’s antisemitic connection is not unique, as an Oxford University study found that one-in-five British people believed that Jews created the coronavirus pandemic for financial gain.
Kennedy’s history of antisemitism
Kennedy has drawn public attention in the past for making inappropriate comments regarding Jews and COVID-19.
In January 2022, Kennedy was forced to apologize after he made a comment implying holocaust-victim Anne Frank existed in a better situation than anti-vaxxers did during the pandemic.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did,” Kennedy had said at a rally in January 2022, in Washington DC. “Today the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, none of us can hide.”
Kennedy has been known to have friendly connections with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, according to the New York Post, who is well-known for his antisemitic beliefs.