Robert Kennedy Jr denies that his remarks on ‘ethnically targeted' Covid were racist

Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr. on Saturday (July 15) slammed the allegations of racism and anti-Semitism after he reportedly claimed that Covid might have been "ethnically targetted" to spare the Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. According to a report by the New York Post, Kennedy addressed a press event in New York City on Tuesday where he said, "COVID-19, there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. 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," he added, as per the report.

Facing severe backlash, Kennedy tweeted on Saturday that the story by the New York Post was mistaken, and he never suggested Covid was targetted to spare Jews.

"I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the US and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races since the furin cleave docking site is most compatible with Blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews," he tweeted.

"In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons," Kennedy further said and shared a link to the study.

A reputation as an anti-vaxxer

Kennedy had built a reputation as an anti-vaxxer even before the Covid pandemic started. According to a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), he was among 12 people responsible for the majority of Covid conspiracy theories online.

The CCDH analysed over 800,000 anti-vaccine posts shared on Facebook and Twitter between February 1 and March 16, 2021. The centre found that 65 per cent of this content could be attributed to the "disinformation dozen".

On Facebook alone, the CCDH found that those 12 people were responsible for 73 per cent of the anti-vaccine content on the platform.

Democrat slams Kennedy: Remarks 'amplify sinister and unfounded notions...'

Marianne Williamson, another Democratic presidential hopeful, strongly denounced Kennedy's remarks on Tuesday. "Whether intentionally or not, his remarks amplify sinister and unfounded notions that are both anti-Semitic and anti-Chinese," Williamson tweeted late Saturday.

"As a Jewish American candidate in the 2024 presidential race, I stand against this covert racism writ large. Such language serves only to divide us further at a moment when we need desperately to unite," she added.

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