Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Pricks against pricks |
Robert Kennedy, Jr. is the son of the late Robert Kennedy, and the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy. He is a lawyer and staunch environmentalist. Many of his court cases involve claims of product safety violations and pollution by corporations.
He is also currently co-host of the liberal talk radio show Ring of Fire, syndicated by Westwood One (Saturday afternoon, 3-6 PM EST). He is a generally stalwart fellow and "friend of the working man."
In the last few years, however, he has succumbed to vaccine hysteria and makes the sad mistake of peddling false hope regarding the vaccine/autism conspiracy theory, a stance which earned him the chair of Donald Trump's "vaccination safety" committee. This is the point where his family members distanced themselves from him.[1] In addition, Kennedy endorsed the conspiracy theory that the Republicans rigged the 2004 election.[2] By 2020, Kennedy Jr.'s embrace of conspiracy theories extended into believing the COVID-19 hysteric story that Bill Gates was going to put microchips in vaccines. [3] Kennedy is also against water fluoridation.[4]
Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccination group Children’s Health Defense (in alliance with a group called the World Mercury Project) was one of the top two groups that spread misinformation about vaccines on Facebook via anti-vaccination advertisements in 2019. [5] Facebook (sort of) started to crack down on groups that spread bullshit like this in 2020. CHD responded by suing Facebook for "censorship" [6]. (Despite his prior experience as a lawyer, Kennedy Jr. somehow failed to recognize what long established case law currently says. Generally speaking, what's protected by the First Amendment in this case is Facebook's right to utilize editorial judgment to prevent the publication of bullshit on their platform.)
External links
- Ring of Fire program website
- RFK, Jr. peddling his conspiracies at a Green Our Vaccines rally
- Skeptico on Deadly Immunity article and Retraction Watch's coverage.
- Orac on RFK, Jr.
- A Daily Show interview that unfortunately questioned his vaccine hysteria not.
- Farhad Manjoo debunks Kennedy's claims of 2004 election rigging.
References
- ↑ Stevenson, C. (May 8, 2019). Robert F Kennedy Jr's family slam his anti-vaccine views in wake of measles outbreak: 'He is spreading dangerous misinformation'. The Independent. Retrieved May 10, 2019.
- ↑ Kennedy Jr., Robert F. "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?." Rolling Stone, no. 1002, 15 June 2006, pp. 46-114.
- ↑ "Debunked Bill Gates Conspiracy Gets A Boost From RFK Jr., Marla Maples" by Carlie Porterfield, Forbes, 2020 August 15
- ↑ "The Children's Health Defense Team: Fluoridation Must End", press release, Fluoride Action Network, archived on Biospace.com, 2019 Jan 10
- ↑ "Majority of anti-vaccine ads on Facebook were funded by two groups" by Lena H. Sun, Washington Post, 2019 November 15
- ↑ "Anti-vaccine group sues Facebook, claims fact-checking is “censorship”" by Kate Cox, Ars Technica, 2020 August 18