RFK Jr. Group Has Been Cozying Up to White Supremacists
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president, and thus on leave as the chairman of the Children’s Health Defense. The group, like its founder, has spent the past few years pushing misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines. It has also, as Media Matters reported on Wednesday, been using the far-right social media platform Gab to recruit followers.
Media Matters notes that the CHD subscribes to Gab Pro, and has posted to the site over 1,500 times since Jan. 2021. The Anti-Defamation League has labeled Gab as a “haven for extremists, conspiracy theorists and misinformation.” The platform’s CEO, Andrew Torba, is openly antisemitic and has said American Christians are “done being controlled” in “our own country” by the “two-percent minority,” meaning Jewish people.
CHD made a direct appeal to Torba, whose user name is @a. “@a Please follow + support Children’s Health Defense and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. #Freespeech is yet again under attack,” the group wrote in July 2021, just one of several instances in which it hopped into Torba’s replies, tagging Torba.
Rolling Stone reached out to both CHD and Kennedy’s campaign for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.
Media Matters highlighted several other examples of the group appealing to white supremacists on Gab, including how the group slid into the replies of Rob Colbert, a former executive for the platform who has made several bigoted posts. “I don’t have any questions about why my ancestors kept these retarded man-like creatures locked in sheds with metal collars on their necks that had bells on them,” Colbert wrote in March, added a hashtag with the N-word.
CHD has also interacted with users who regularly espouse virulent racism, who praise Hitler and whose profiles feature Nazi symbols, and who have pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Kennedy founded CHD in 2011 and is very much the face of the organization, appearing prominently on its website and in its marketing materials. He announced in April that he is challenging President Biden for the Democratic nomination, and has since been elevated by figures like Elon Musk, the right-wing Twitter owner who like Kennedy is no stranger to conspiracy theories. Kennedy espoused several of them during an event with Musk earlier this month, describing Covid-19 as a “bioweapon” and blaming school shootings on anti-depressants.
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