ROBERT KENNEDY JUNIOR ON THE DANGERS OF THE COVID-19 VACCINE

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., does not want you to think of him as an anti-vaxxer. I have yet to meet an anti-vaxxer—someone who spreads misinformation about all vaccines being harmful—who is comfortable with the label. Kennedy is not just anti-vaccine; by many recent accounts, he is one of the princes of the anti-vaccination movement, if not its king. The website Media Bias/Fact Check calls Kennedy’s corporation, Children’s Health Defense, “a strong conspiracy and quackery level advocacy group.” An academic paper published in January 2020 reported that Children’s Health Defense was one of two buyers accounting for 54% of anti-vaccine advertising content on Facebook. Kennedy himself is part of the Disinformation Dozen, a gaggle of influencers generating two-thirds of anti-vaccination content on Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent assessment. Instagram banned him from their platform earlier this year, although his corporation’s account remains active.

As Kennedy releases a new “documentary” that uses medical failures toward Black people to sow distrust in the COVID-19 vaccines, I asked myself: how did one of John F. Kennedy’s nephews rise to infamy as one of the loudest voices of the modern anti-vaccination movement?