Robert F Kennedy Jr accused of antisemitic Covid conspiracy theory

Robert F Kennedy Jr has plunged his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination into more controversy after claiming that Covid-19 may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Jewish and Chinese people.

The 69-year-old nephew of John F Kennedy was accused of reviving the antisemitic conspiracy theory during a press event at an Italian restaurant in New York. After stating that both China and the US were developing ethnic bioweapons “so we can target people by race”, he mentioned Covid-19 and added: “There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted.”

“Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy told fellow diners at Tony’s Di Napoli on Tuesday night. “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.”

Anti-racism campaign groups condemned his comments after they were published with a video by the New York Post on Saturday.

“The claim that Covid-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and black people is deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement. “We have no words for this man’s lunacy,” tweeted Stop Antisemitism, a campaign group.

Kennedy has claimed the Post story was “mistaken” and complained his remarks were made “off the record”. He insisted he had “never, ever suggested that the Covid-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews”.

“I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered,” Kennedy tweeted, with a link to a medical study on genetic susceptibility to Covid-19.

His explanation did not appear to satisfy Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “These are deeply troubling comments and I want to make clear that they do not represent the views of the Democratic Party,” he tweeted.

Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman who represents the Bronx, described Kennedy as “a complete crackpot who has no business being anywhere near the presidency”.

Kennedy, who launched his challenge to President Biden in March, is a vehement opponent of Covid vaccination. He has claimed that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, attempted to profit from the vaccines.

In May he made headlines by blaming the CIA for his uncle’s assassination in Dallas in November 1963, claiming that there was “overwhelming” evidence that the agency was involved in the murder and an ensuing cover-up. He has also maintained that Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of killing his father, Robert F Kennedy, in 1968, was not responsible for his death and should be released from jail.