At the beginning of last year as Covid-19 spread across the United States, those opposing the government’s measures to tackle the pandemic gathered to protest at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
One of the more high-profile speakers caused outrage by suggesting that Jews in Europe during the Nazi era had more freedoms than Americans during Covid-19.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”
The speaker was Robert F Kennedy jnr, who later apologised for his Anne Frank remark, “especially to families that suffered the Holocaust horrors”.
An environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine advocate, Kennedy Jnr has formally announced he is to run for the White House.
Kennedy has a stellar political pedigree. But despite his background in a legendary Democratic family, his activism has brought him to places where his beliefs chime with many on the American right.
The third of the 11 children of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, his father was attorney general of the US and a presidential candidate who was assassinated in 1968. His uncle was president John F Kennedy. Long-time US senator Ted Kennedy was also an uncle.
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He started his career as an environmental lawyer, leading the campaign to clean up the Hudson river, but in more recent times he has become better known for his activism in relation to vaccination.
He told a conservative college in Michigan recently that he was not anti-vaccine but “I’m kind of the poster child for the anti-vax movement”. He maintains that safety is his primary goal.
In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named him one of 12 people responsible for roughly three-quarters of anti-vaccine content on some social media platforms.
His scepticism about vaccinations predated the emergence of Covid-19. He has backed the now widely discredited theory linking childhood vaccination to autism.
In 2019 three prominent family members said, in an article, that while they stood behind his work on the environment, “on vaccines he is wrong”.
His sister Kerry Kennedy, who is president of the non-profit organisation Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, said earlier this month: “I love my brother Bobby but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the Covid pandemic, vaccinations and the role of social media platforms in policing false information. It is also important to note that Bobby’s views are not reflected in or influence the mission or work of our organisation.”
He also maintains that Sirhan B Sirhan, the man convicted 50 years ago of killing his father, did not do so. He is the author of a forthcoming book that alleges that US health officials conspired with the Chinese military to conceal the origins of Covid-19.
Mr Kennedy’s declaration on Wednesday came as a poll suggested he had the support of about 14 per cent of voters who had previously backed Joe Biden for president in 2020.
Mr Biden, by far the favourite to become the Democratic Party candidate for the White House, has not formally declared that he will run again for the presidency. However, he has signalled that he will shortly announce his campaign for re-election.
Self-help author Marianne Williamson is also seeking the Democratic nomination.
Mr Kennedy has acknowledged that his family has close links with Mr Biden – with some members holding key positions in the administration, including his nephew Joseph Kennedy III who is the new economic envoy to Northern Ireland.
Speaking at the launch of his campaign for the White House in Boston on Wednesday Mr Kennedy said: “I’ve come here today to announce my candidacy for Democratic nomination for president of the United States.
“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign, and throughout my presidency, will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism on our country, to commoditise our children, our purple mountain’s majesty; to poison our children and our people with chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs; to strip-mine our assets; to hollow out the middle class and keep us in a constant state of war.”
He said that as president he would seek to end the chronic disease epidemic in the US and, if he did not achieve this to a significant degree, would not want to be re-elected to a second term.
Mr Kennedy also called for a national conversation in the US about the war in Ukraine.
In a USA Today/Suffolk University poll on Wednesday, 14 per cent of people surveyed who had voted for president Biden in 2020 said they would back Mr Kennedy. The poll found that Mr Biden’s support among his own 2020 voters stood at 67 per cent.