Who is JFK’s nephew Robert F Kennedy Jr? The anti-vaxxer who wants to run for US president
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nephew of the assassinated former president John F Kennedy, has filed to run for US president.
Following the family footsteps into politics – that’s not so unusual, you might think.
As well as having an uncle in the top job, Mr Kennedy’s father Robert F Kennedy – often known as Bobby – was assassinated in 1968 during his own run for the White House.
But Mr Kennedy isn’t exactly a chip off the old block, making a name for himself as an anti-vaxxer during the pandemic – and before.
A history of anti-vaccine activism
The anti-vax movement took off during the COVID pandemic, but the history of vaccine scepticism is as old as vaccinations themselves.
After co-founding the Food Allergy Initiative in the 1990s, Mr Kennedy began to argue some vaccines were linked to allergies in children.
In 2005, he wrote Deadly Immunity, an essay that repeated the debunked claim vaccines were linked to autism in children.
In that piece, and in his 2014 book Thimerosal – Let the Science Speak, he claimed thimerosal, a mercury-containing compound used as a preservative in vaccines, caused autism.
Nine studies by the US Center for Disease Control have found no link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.
The disinformation dozen
After the pandemic hit, Mr Kennedy’s rise in anti-vaccine circles was meteoric.
His non-profit Children’s Health Defence (CHD) saw visits to its website, which hosts a range of anti-vaccine articles, soar from 150,000 per month before the pandemic to a peak of 4.7 million.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate named Mr Kennedy among its “disinformation dozen” – a tiny group responsible for a “tidal wave of disinformation” on social media.
Posts from CHD were shared on Twitter more than mainstream news sources, analysis from Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media revealed.
The organisation was banned from Facebook and Instagram in August 2022 for repeatedly violating guidelines around vaccine misinformation.
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“Robert F Kennedy Jr is probably the most notorious and leading anti-vaxxer in the United States right now,” Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told Sky News in February 2022.
“He’s really rocketed up the league table because he’s taken advantage of that Kennedy name to draw in people from both sides of the political aisle of the political spectrum.
“And what he’s been able to do is soften the messaging, bring some sophistication to the messaging, which is just old-fashioned nonsense that vaccines harm you, or they cause other diseases.”
Comparing vaccine mandates to the Holocaust
As well as sharing disinformation online, Mr Kennedy became a regular on the anti-mandate rally circuit.
At one event, he compared the US government’s use of vaccine mandates to laws in Nazi Germany.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” he told the crowd at a march in January 2022.
“Today, the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, and none of us can hide.”
His remarks triggered outcry. Auschwitz Memorial criticised Mr Kennedy’s comments for “exploiting the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured and murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany – including children like Anne Frank”.
Doing so in a debate about vaccines was a “sad symptom of moral and intellectual decay”, the organisation said.
He later apologised for his comments and his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, condemned the comparison.
The Real Anthony Fauci
In 2021, Mr Kennedy published his book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.
He accused the US’s top infectious disease doctor of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy” and claimed he and Bill Gates were operating a “cartel”.
He also promoted unproven COVID-19 treatments such as ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug designed for livestock, and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.
Kennedy the environmental activist
Before gaining fame as an anti-vaxxer, Mr Kennedy was hailed for his work in environmental law.
Mr Kennedy achieved a masters in environmental law from Pace University, having previously studied at Harvard and the London School of Economics (LSE).
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He gained a reputation as a staunch environmental lawyer, opposing the use of fossil fuels and working on behalf of indigenous groups.
He was named one of Time magazine’s “heroes for the planet” for his success in saving the Hudson River from pollution.
Politics and a bid for presidency
Mr Kennedy has announced he will challenge Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee for the White House next year.
The 69-year-old is the fourth member of his family line to run for president, although it’s unlikely his bid will get very far, with Mr Biden indicating he will run again for a second term.
He first suggested he might run in March, when he said his top priority would be to “end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms”.
Personal life
Born in Washington DC in 1954, Mr Kennedy was 14 when his father was assassinated.
He has married three times and has six children – two from his first marriage and four from his second.
He lives with his third wife Cheryl Hines, who met him through her Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star Larry David.
