Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alleged that COVID-19 had been specifically designed not to affect Jews and Chinese people.
RFK Jr. alleged the idea during a question-and-answer period at a New York restaurant on the Upper East Side, where he answered questions about COVID-19, biological weapons. and China's interest in such a virus. He specifically theorized that the coronavirus was designed not to affect certain groups, including Jews.
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“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said in a video released by the New York Post. “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,” Kennedy added.
Kennedy also expressed his worries about other stronger biological weapons in development that would make COVID-19 look like a walk in the park.
“We do know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons, and we are developing ethnic bioweapons,” he claimed. “They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”
Jewish advocacy groups slammed RFK for his statement.
“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 anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years," the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement.
Kennedy's remarks echo antisemitic literature released in the early days of the pandemic, according to The Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at the University of Tel Aviv’s 2021 Antisemitism Worldwide Report. United States intelligence agencies are still split on a growing consensus that COVID-19 was developed in a Chinese lab, but there is no evidence that the virus did not affect particular groups.
Kennedy denies that such remarks at anti-Semitic. “I have never, ever suggested that the Covid-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews,” the presidential candidate tweeted on Saturday.
He instead stated that his intent was to illustrate how governments around the world were developing "ethnically targeted bioweapons."
The @nypost story is mistaken. I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 15, 2023
Some countries, such as Russia, have reported that Jewish communities suffered lower casualty rates to COVID-19. China also reported surprisingly low COVID-19-related death numbers, although some experts believe this is due to the government covering up the number of deaths.
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Kennedy is considered the foremost competitor for President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary. He's averaged between 8% to 20% of the vote in recent polls of Democratic voters, according to RealClearPolitics. He has also had significant fundraising success, having raised more than $3 million in a 3-day period last week.