“I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote I could run for King of the world” - Robert F Kennedy Jr
I am not the biggest fan of political dynasties. The idea of a select minority of people holding such a wide grip over a state’s politics has always been something that irked me. But I nonetheless cannot deny the focal weight, responsibility, and influence that the Kennedy name bears, especially when considering RFK Jr.
Born in 1954 to the soon-to-be Attorney General, and younger sibling to JFK, Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy (RFK senior), RFK Jr was certainly born with a lot on his plate. He went on to lose his father at 14, study at Harvard, battle a speech impediment, and portray himself as an environmental trailblazer with Time magazine declaring him to be “a hero for the Planet”. Battles such as these, whether personal or for larger causes are laudable and it is consequently easy to understand why he has had such a pull. Indeed, I would go as far as to argue that it is prima facie hard not to like him.
However, like Douglas Murray, RFK Jr’s likeability fades with a broader look at his career. As I'll expound, he personifies the lethal malaise at the heart of American politics where the 3 P’s seminally coined by Moisés Naim in his book “The Revenge of Power”, namely populism, polarisation, and post-truth are allowed to poison the well of mainstream discourse.
Populism
RFK Jr has always wanted to present himself as fighting for the best interests of the working man, doing so through a populist lens. Indeed, one headline from his campaign website spells it out quite clearly: It’s “We The People” Not “We The Corporations”. Putting aside the irony of a Kennedy claiming to fight against the establishment, he does have the credentials to back it up, at least in part. He has fought against entities ranging from Ford to government agencies for their part in the pollution of rivers and chemical spills. But it is his stance against ‘Big Pharma’ that has arguably helped propel his profile most of all.
It is important to grant that pharmaceutical companies in the United States have caused substantial harm. One has only to look towards the flotilla of scandals from the Opioid crisis to the case of Martin Shkreli to realise that there is something deeply wrong with the way in which monopolistic pharmaceutical companies are run. However, while it is necessary to hold “Big Pharma” to account, RFK Jr’s populist narrative of a Democratic cabal feebly catering to the demands of pharmaceutical puppet masters is as troubling as it is daft. Kennedy went on to add in a conversation on Twitter spaces that “Democrats were getting more money from pharma than Republicans.” This claim is not only false (Republicans have favoured Pharmaceutical companies for 14 out of the past 16 elections), but serves as evidence that Kennedy only cares about opposing pharmaceutical companies so long as it fits into his populist narrative.
Additionally, such allegations are not particularly novel. Writing in a now-deleted article in Rolling Stone in 2006 Kennedy falsely claimed that Big Pharma “knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children” through the proliferation of vaccines which cause autism, something which countless studies and academic journals have conclusively refuted.
Even Trump, who is no stranger to blatant falsehoods himself, initially distanced himself from RFK in 2016 after the scale of danger posed by his claims became all too apparent, especially his stance on vaccines.
Polarisation
On his campaign website, RFK writes that “Left isn’t better, Right isn’t better, Better is better”. For many Americans, this sounds like a breath of fresh air, and it has certainly worked wonders for RFK. With most Americans disapproving of the two main frontrunners, Kennedy was able to amass a wide tent of supporters, millions resonating with his anti-establishment message. Who Kennedy really means by the establishment, however, is wider than some of his supporters would like to believe.
Although RFK has made efforts to portray himself as a moderate, even saying that he would “apologise” if proven to be wrong, evidence points to the contrary. Indeed, Kennedy’s stance on vaccines reveals an unabashedly divisive stance, one that has alienated friends and labelled selfless healthcare professionals as fundamental cogs in the establishment machine. Take for instance the canyon that separates Kennedy's denial of an anti-vax stance to the rhetoric he spews to his base. Above all, consider how he presents himself as a concerned citizen just asking questions (where have we heard that before…) to the blatant and unapologetic conspiracies he feeds to his base.
In a congressional hearing, RFK touted that “I have never been anti-vax. I have never told the public to avoid vaccination.” This stance however stands at odds with the myriad statements in which Kennedy has urged his supporters to “resist” medical advice, or another where he purportedly said: “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.” Such statements have consequences, and in Kennedy's case, have led to unimaginable tragedy.
Post-truth
Populism ends with post-truth. As opposed to a means to an end it is the end itself: where matters of objective truth become negotiable.
On the 20th of November 2019, the Pacific nation of Samoa recorded a state of emergency in response to a measles outbreak that had swept the country. By the 17th of December, the outbreak had claimed 83 lives and infected thousands more. A year prior, tragedy had also struck the island when two young children died after the combination of a muscle relaxant with a measles vaccine had proved fatal. As opposed to being correctly interpreted as a consequence of human error, many residents blamed the vaccine alone. A few months later, none other than RFK Jr. visited the island after an invitation from an anti-vax activist, where he was treated as a distinguished guest advising both the Health Minister and subsequently the Prime Minister himself.
It is important to note that the specific details of RFK’s conversations have not been published so the extent to which Kennedy can be blamed for the outbreak cannot be fully explored. Nevertheless, RFK Jr remains complicit, and as Helen Petousis-Harris adds, local anxieties had become “ripe for the picking for someone like RFK to come in and assist with the promotion of those views”.
Why RFK J.r remains a threat
After a long campaign replete with misinformation and conspiracy theories, RFK Jr suspended his candidacy on the 23rd of August to endorse Republican frontrunner and adjudicated sex offender Donald J Trump who had reportedly offered him a cabinet position as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
While RFK Jr.'s influence had limited him to a platform and a position as a potential spoiler candidate, Kennedy's appointment would allow him to unleash the full extent of his bizarre and dangerous theories through government policy, and this time it may prove far more tragic than the episode in Samoa nearly 5 years ago.
Image: Flickr/Gage Skidmore
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