RFK Jr. Disavows Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, Whom He Once Called a ‘Truly Great Partner’
Kennedy has come under fire for making anti-Semitic statements about the coronavirus
Robert Kennedy Jr. once hailed Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as a "truly great partner" in pushing a controversial link between vaccines and autism. Now, the Democratic presidential candidate has disavowed the anti-Semitic preacher amid a scandal over his own controversial remarks about Jews.
Kennedy distanced himself from Farrakhan as part of a clean-up effort after the Democrat asserted that the coronavirus may have been "ethnically targeted" to harm black and white people, while Ashkenazi Jews appeared to have greater immunity to the virus. Kennedy, who was denounced by some Jewish groups and Democratic Party leaders, claimed his statements were taken out of context and that he is not anti-Semitic.
Kennedy’s remarks brought his relationship with Farrakhan back into the spotlight. Farrakhan has railed against "satanic Jews" and in 2013 claimed that "the Jewish media" promoted "sexual degeneracy, profanity, and all kinds of sin." Farrakhan said in 2018 that "powerful Jews are my enemy."
Asked this week about his relationship with Farrakhan, Kennedy claimed he is an "opponent" of Farrakhan and has "never endorsed anything that Louis Farrakhan has said."
But Kennedy’s previous actions appear to contradict that claim.
In 2015, Kennedy visited Farrakhan and introduced him to the unfounded theory that measles vaccines are linked to higher rates of autism, the Washington Free Beacon reported. A Nation of Islam official who attended the meeting said that Kennedy informed the group that the measles "vaccine is genetically modified to give black boys autism," a claim without evidence.
Kennedy called Farrakhan a "truly great partner" at a protest outside Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in October 2015. Kennedy continued over the next few years to work with the Nation of Islam on the vaccine issue. In 2020, Farrakhan urged his supporters to "follow Robert Kennedy," and claimed that scientists administered the coronavirus vaccine in order to "depopulate the Earth."
Kennedy claimed in his recent interview that he was not aware of Farrakhan’s history of anti-Semitism when they began working together in 2015. But Kennedy’s writings in his private diary appear to contradict that. According to a 2013 report, Kennedy wrote that he was disenchanted with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson because of his "love affair with Louis Farrakhan and his Jewish xenophobia."
Kennedy claimed he cut ties with the Nation of Islam after a colleague informed him of Farrakhan’s comments about Jews. Kennedy said he asked his friend, Nation of Islam official Tony Muhammad, to publicly disavow Farrakhan. When Muhammad declined, according to Kennedy, "that was the end of our friendship."
Kennedy did not say when that conversation occurred, but he worked with Muhammad as recently as 2021. Kennedy hosted Muhammad to discuss his documentary Medical Racism: The New Apartheid. Kennedy pushed the unfounded claim that scientists are "conducting an experiment on black Americans" by vaccinating black children against measles.
In his interview, Kennedy said the "worst two accusations that anybody can make about you are that you’re an antisemite or a pedophile."
Kennedy recently interviewed Scott Ritter, a convicted child sex offender, on his podcast. The pair criticized United States support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia.
Kennedy’s campaign and Tony Muhammad did not respond to requests for comment.
Published under: Anti-Semitism , Coronavirus , Feature , Louis Farrakhan , Nation of Islam , Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Vaccines
Antisemitism and anti-Chinese racism: The case of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
While dining at an upscale restaurant last week in Manhattan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is challenging President Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, gave voice to fascistic sentiments about the origins of COVID-19. According to a report published Saturday in the New York Post, Kennedy claimed that Jews and Chinese people are less susceptible to the virus which is the cause of the global pandemic, and that this may be the result of deliberate genetic engineering.
In a two-minute video recording of his remarks, published on the newspaper’s web site, Kennedy can be heard saying, “In fact, COVID-19, there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.” He goes on to claim, “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” because of “the genetic structure” of the virus. “The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” Kennedy said, citing a July 2020 scientific paper which makes no such claim.
Kennedy is a proponent of the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 is a man-made virus released by Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology together with their American colleagues. The implication of Kennedy’s statement is that the disease is a biological weapon created by Chinese researchers and Jewish American scientists to kill Christians.
There is a deep historical resonance in Kennedy’s comment, which bears comparison to the “blood libel” against the Jews, first concocted as far back as the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of secretly draining the blood from Christian children. Such lies were revived by Russian Tsarism in its fabrication of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to justify pogroms against the Jews, and then taken up by the Nazis in their genocidal effort to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe.
In 2021, the World Socialist Web Site published a perspective that described the conspiracy theory as “The Wuhan lab libel,” in reference to its parallels with the antisemitic blood libel.
Kennedy’s racist conspiracy theory could be termed the Protocol of the Elders of Wuhan—a crude amalgam of antisemitism and American nativist hysteria against the “Yellow Peril.” The pseudo-science of the Chinese lab leak “theory” is combined with the medieval fiction that Jews were immune to and responsible for the Black Death.
In reality, New York City, with the largest Jewish population in North America, was the city hardest hit by the first wave of COVID-19. And China, which largely escaped the pandemic for more than two years through mass testing, tracing and quarantining, has suffered a colossal death toll in the eight months since the Zero-COVID policy was abandoned under pressure from world imperialism, including the United States.
Kennedy cannot be dismissed as a lunatic or fringe conspiracy theorist. He is giving expression to powerful trends within the US ruling elite, which is deliberately whipping up fascistic sentiments that have a long history in America—antisemitism, racism, anti-Chinese bigotry—under conditions of escalating imperialist war against Russia and preparations for an even broader and more dangerous war against China.
This goes beyond the role of Trump and the Republican Party in fomenting bigotry towards immigrants and racism towards China. The top newspapers aligned with the Democratic Party, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have been principal promoters of the Wuhan lab lie—the right-wing conspiracy theory, first floated by Trump’s fascist counselor Steve Bannon, that SARS-CoV-2 was created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then released to infect the world.
They also assiduously promoted the fiction of “Russian intervention” in the US electoral process, as the Democratic Party sought to divert all popular hatred of Trump’s reactionary administration into a campaign against the Putin regime in Moscow, which prepared the way for the current US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
In that war, the Biden administration and the entire corporate media have systematically legitimized a fascistic narrative, covering up the neo-Nazi ties of Ukrainian forces like the Azov Battalion, and the collaboration with the Holocaust on the part of Stepan Bandera and other Ukrainian fascists now hailed as national heroes by the regime in Kiev.
Last week’s NATO summit was held provocatively in Vilnius, Lithuania, only a short drive from the Russian border, a country now run by the political heirs of the Lithuanian fascist collaborators with Hitler, who rivaled the Gestapo in their zeal to exterminate the Jews. The assembled NATO leaders said nothing about the fact that their host city was a focal point of the Holocaust.
Kennedy’s ravings shed light as well on the bankrupt and reactionary character of the campaign for a “left-right alliance” launched by various figures aligned with the pseudo-left, including author Chris Hedges and journalist Glenn Greenwald. They might personally abhor Kennedy’s remarks about Jews and Chinese, but Greenwald conducted a sympathetic interview with Kennedy after he launched his presidential campaign, which gave considerable attention to his opposition to vaccine mandates and other COVID mitigation measures.
A long-time anti-vaccine campaigner, Kennedy has used his financial resources in a politically criminal effort to link basic vaccines against childhood illnesses to the growth of autism. That did not stop the promoters of the “left-right alliance” from embracing his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, with former Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich, an opponent of the Iraq war, as his campaign manager. As the son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy, he has high name recognition and initial credibility with a public unfamiliar with his deeply reactionary outlook.
The response in the corporate media to this filthy outburst has been remarkably restrained. It has not been treated as a disqualifier that would force Kennedy out of the race. Only one Sunday television talk show even mentioned it, and that as an afterthought.
Particularly noteworthy is the anodyne report in the New York Times, supposedly the newspaper of record, and one with a large Jewish readership who were undoubtedly alarmed and disgusted when they learned of Kennedy’s comments. The first version of the Times report carried the headline, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Covid Remarks Raise Questions of Antisemitism.” One might ask, what “questions” could remain, given the assertion that COVID was “targeted” to spare the Jews. Only later, likely after protests both external and internal, was the headline changed to read, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Airs Bigoted New Covid Conspiracy Theory About Jews and Chinese.”
Kennedy’s remarks demonstrate a more general proposition about capitalist politics in time of war. Imperialist war is inevitably accompanied by the worst forms of ideological reaction, including antisemitism, which aim to incite the popular hatred of the “enemy” required for imposing sacrifices in living standards, democratic rights and human lives, and to divert and divide the inevitable resistance of the working class to the war and all its consequences.
As Leon Trotsky wrote in The Transitional Program, the founding document of the Fourth International:
Before exhausting or drowning mankind in blood, capitalism befouls the world atmosphere with the poisonous vapors of national and race hatred. Anti-semitism today is one of the more malignant convulsions of capitalism’s death agony.
An uncompromising disclosure of the roots of race prejudice and all forms and shades of national arrogance and chauvinism should become part of the daily work of all sections of the Fourth International, as the most important part of the struggle against imperialism and war. Our basic slogan remains: Workers of the World Unite!
WE CAN'T AFFORD ONE MORE SOCIOPATH LAWYER IN THE WH
RFK Jr. Refuses to Confront Joe Biden on Alleged Family Corruption
Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. refused to attack President Joe Biden on his family’s alleged corruption, despite polling that shows overwhelming concern about the scandal.
As While House investigators chip away at uncovering the Biden business shell companies and web of bank accounts tied to foreign advisories, Joe Biden’s top primary opponent prefers not to raise the issue with voters.
President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden arrive at Fort McNair on June 25, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
“I don’t have a comment on that,” Kennedy told Fox News when asked about the growing evidence of corruption against the Bidens.
“What I’ve tried to do in this campaign is to focus on issues and focus on the values and not focus on ad hominem attacks on people,” Kennedy claimed.
“Isn’t alleged corruption an issue that voters should be concerned about?” Fox News pressed.
“I think on every side it’s something that people should be concerned about, but it’s not something that I’m making a spear tip to my campaign,” Kennedy replied.
Polling shows a majority of independents want congressional investigations into the Biden family business prioritized. Another majority of registered voters believe President Joe Biden’s family received millions of dollars from Chinese government-linked sources.
RELATED VIDEO — “Give Me a Break, Man”: Biden SNAPS at Reporter Asking About Family’s Business Relations in China:
The White HouseIn addition, a majority of Democrats believe Hunter Biden’s alleged “preferential treatment” in his tax case with the Justice Department is a serious scandal. A second poll reveals 61 percent of Americans believe Hunter Biden received “special treatment” in his plea deal with U.S. Prosecutor David Weiss.
The surveys are in response to revelations uncovered by House Republican investigations into Joe Biden and his family.
In March, the House Oversight Committee revealed the Biden family business over the course of several years received over $10 million from business schemes in Romania and China in return for what appears to be influence peddling.
For instance, Suspicious Activity Reports obtained by the committee revealed a Biden associate, Rob Walker, received a $3 million wire transfer from CEFC China Energy Co. In turn, four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — received a collective $1.3 million cut from the $3 million wire transfer.
In addition, Breitbart News reported the Biden family business received a total of $5.1 million through multiple accounts within days of Hunter Biden’s recently unearthed WhatsApp messages to CEFC.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” one screen capture shows. “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight.”
Hunter added, “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
“I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,” he concluded.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
James Comer: Bidens Owned over 20 Shell Companies to Hide Payments, Launder Money
The Biden family opened more than 20 shell companies to hide payments and launder money, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) said Sunday.
After reviewing Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) at the Treasury and subpoenaing banks and individuals, Comer posted on Twitter that the Biden family created more than 20 entities to accept, forward, and collect payment from a wide range of business associates.
“We found all these shell companies that make absolutely no sense,” Comer told Fox News. “I don’t believe they have paid a penny of revenue, a penny of taxes on most of the millions of dollars they received from our adversaries around the world.”
In March, the committee revealed the Biden family business over the course of several years received over $10 million from business schemes in Romania and China in return for what appears to be influence peddling.
For instance, SARs obtained by the committee revealed a Biden associate, Rob Walker, received a $3 million wire transfer from CEFC China Energy Co. In turn, four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — received a collective $1.3 million cut from the $3 million wire transfer.
Breitbart News reported the Biden family business received a total of $5.1 million within days of Hunter Biden’s messages to CEFC through multiple accounts, including Owasco and Hudson West III LLC.
“How did they list this on their taxes?” Comer questioned. “Is it a service they provided?”
Moving forward, Comer’s committee is set to begin deposing Biden family business associates in the coming weeks and months. Comer said in early July that Devon Archer, one of Hunter Biden’s top associates, will be the first member deposed to unravel the family’s international business schemes.
Archer was Hunter Biden’s “best friend in business” and got in legal trouble in 2022 for defrauding a Native American tribal entity. The court ordered him to pay a $43,954,416.75 judgment to the victims. Prior to his arrest, Archer served in 2014 with Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma, a Ukraine-based energy company, whose executive, Mykola Zlochevsky, allegedly bribed Hunter and Joe Biden with $5 million each.
Comer said the future depositions will be bolstered by Wednesday’s public testimony of IRS whistleblowers, who revealed at least 13 serious allegations against Hunter Biden, the Justice Department, and President Joe Biden.
“We’re now at the phase of the investigation where we’ve accumulated enough bank records to where we can ask these IRS employees specific substantive questions,” Comer said.
Among the allegations, the IRS whistleblowers alleged Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf refused to allow investigators to ask about Joe Biden being “the big guy.” Wolf also allegedly blocked questions about “the big guy” to limit where the investigation could go despite evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement. They also claimed Rob Walker said Joe Biden showed up at a meeting with CEFC and family associates.
“This should be a good substantive committee hearing that will allow us to move forward in the deposition process when we bring these individuals that were helping the Bidens funnel and launder this money,” Comer explained. “We will be able to ask them specific questions about specific transactions.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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