Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Riding a Tidal Wave of Anti-Vaccine Resentment

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began his political activities as an environmental campaigner, before becoming involved in the anti-vaccine movement.
• The pandemic saw Kennedy's profile explode, with his book 'The Real Anthony Fauci' becoming a bestseller.
• Earlier this month Kennedy launched his bid for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. What can he hope to achieve?

"This is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years," declared Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "I've got a lot to talk about."

The California-based environmental campaigner, now an anti-vaccine activist, chose Boston, a traditional stronghold of his epochal family, to announce he is challenging President Joe Biden for the 2022 Democratic presidential nomination.

Not a man to do things by halves, Kennedy spoke for almost two hours at the Park Plaza Hotel on April 19, continuing even when disrupted by a fire alarm.

Notably he avoided direct mention of vaccines, the subject which catapulted his political standing, instead speaking vaguely about "corporate feudalism" and "the corrupt merger of state and corporate power."

But according to Callum Hood, head of research at the UK-based Centre for Countering Digital Hate, for those who knew what to listen for, vaccine skepticism ran like an iron rod through the address.

"Although he didn't mention vaccines in his launch speech the rhetoric is very much there, and we know from reporting that many of the people who turned out to support him are anti-vaccine activists," he told Newsweek.

Hood noted Kennedy had "talked about [how] autism went from one in every 10,000 people in my generation to one in every 34 kids today," and said "that the more you lock down, the worse COVID deaths you got," which he said was typical rhetoric from an anti-vaxxer, even if the link wasn't made explicitly.

Newsweek contacted Kennedy via his official campaign website, requesting an interview or comment, but has yet to receive a response.

Kennedy And Vaccines

Kennedy cut his political teeth in the environmental movement, using his legal experience to litigate against polluting companies and founding the Waterkeeper Alliance network, which campaigns for "swimmable, fishable, drinkable waterways, worldwide," in 1999. Two years later Kennedy was sentenced to 30 days in jail for trespassing on Vieques island, Puerto Rico, in a bid to stop a military bombing exercise, and more recently he was arrested in 2016 at an environmental protest in Washington, D.C.

Increasingly, though, Kennedy's focus has moved across to vaccines, promoting what New York University social media expert Professor Joshua A. Tucker described as "disinformation" about the threat he believes they can pose.

In 2005 Kennedy wrote an article titled "Deadly Immunity" for Rolling Stone, which pushed the widely discredited argument that there is a link between vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal and autism. The piece was also published online by Salon, which was forced to issue a number of corrections and in 2011 retracted the article entirely.

Kennedy contained to promote this link in 2015 when he started working with the World Mercury Project, becoming the group's board chair and chief legal adviser. The organization grew quickly once Kennedy offered his support, with tax fillings showing its revenue went from a lowly $13,114 in 2014, to $467,443 in 2015. It was rebranded Children's Health Defense (CHD) in 2018.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has firmly rejected any connection between mercury in vaccines and autism. Its website states: "There is no evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site."

Kennedy's "history of environmental activism" helped to legitimize his anti-vaccine views, Hood said, with the campaigner having been "very explicit in terms of linking his work against vaccines to his work on environmental standards."

In May 2019, Kennedy received a public rebuke over vaccines from three members of his own family. His siblings Joseph P. Kennedy II and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, along with niece Maeve Kennedy McKean, wrote a joint letter to Politico, saying he had "helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines."

Coronavirus and Commercial Success

The COVID-19 pandemic was the anti-vax movement's "moment to shine," said Aoife Gallagher and Clara Martiny, researchers from the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank.

They told Newsweek that the anti-vaccination activists were able to influence a "wider COVID-skeptical movement" using "recycled narratives and tactics they had honed over the years to spread fear about the COVID-19 vaccines," bringing many new people to their cause.

Dubious claims about the safety of coronavirus vaccines dramatically boosted the profile of both Kennedy and the CHD, which saw its web traffic surge from just over 100,000 hits in January 2020, to nearly 4.7 million in August 2021, according to Similarweb figures collected by the Associated Press.

The CHD also created a European branch, with Kennedy addressing vaccine-skeptical rallies in Italy and Switzerland. In one CHD video, targeted at African Americans, Kennedy emphasized historic racism from the medical establishment, before commenting, "don't listen to Tony [Anthony] Fauci, and don't listen to your doctor."

Kennedy's personal Instagram following rose to over 800,000, before it was deleted by the social media giant in a move to combat "false claims" about the coronavirus and vaccines. Tucker, from New York University, said social media "undoubtedly fueled the spread of anti-vax information" during the pandemic.

In November 2021, Kennedy published a book titled "The Real Anthony Fauci," which accused the then chief medical adviser to the president of being part of "a historic coup d'état against Western democracy." The work was panned by most critics, with one reviewer claiming Kennedy "entered the realm of religious belief" to peddle hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as effective coronavirus treatments. However, commercially it was a success, selling more than 800,000 copies and making it to the New York Times bestsellers list.

"For Kennedy and others in the anti-vaccine world, the pandemic hugely increased their visibility and influence," Gallagher and Martiny said. "It also helped to cement the role of CHD as one of the leading organizations in the anti-vaccine movement and spread the movement to an international audience.

"The CHD was behind a variety of anti-vaccine protests once the COVID-19 vaccine was unrolled worldwide. It often partnered with activists who had made a name for themselves in the anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown, and conspiratorial spaces online over 2020 and 2021."

In June 2021, a study by three academics published in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities concluded 22 percent of Americans identify "at least sometimes" with the anti-vaccination movement.

The most recent Morning Consult survey of nearly 30,000 people in the U.S., conducted between March 7 and 13, found 71 percent of Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19, but 21 percent were "unwilling" to receive the jab. Another 5 percent were uncertain as to whether they have had the jab, with the final 3 percent saying they plan to get vaccinated. The figures vary substantially by political outlook, with 32 percent of Republicans saying they are "unwilling" to be vaccinated, as opposed to 9 percent of Democrats.

Does Kennedy Stand a Chance?

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll conducted earlier this month found Kennedy had the support of 14 percent of 2020 Biden voters, the highest figure for any officially declared Democratic candidate other than Biden himself.

However, he is unlikely to play a major role in the race, according to Thomas Gift, head of University College London's Centre on U.S. Politics.

"Kennedy isn't a serious contender, will mostly be ignored by the mainstream media except as a curiosity, and will have zero impact on how Biden runs his campaign," Gift told Newsweek. "The fact that he's running as an anti-vaxxer as a Democrat is just one of numerous reasons why he'll fail even to be a mild thorn in the side of Biden.

"While vaccine skepticism may or may not be creeping more into the mainstream, Kennedy isn't some broader manifestation of its political traction. In the end, he is what he looks like on the surface: an oddball politician with oddball views looking to trade on his last name to get his 15 seconds."

Earlier this month the The Washington Post reported the Democratic Party "has no plans to sponsor primary debates," which would remove an avenue for Kennedy to boost his profile via a direct debate with Biden.

Dangerous Disinformation?

While none of the experts Newsweek spoke to thought Kennedy was likely to win the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination, a number did suggest that the race could boost his profile, and anti-vaccination politics in general. Hood described the bid as "potentially an opportunity for him to extend his reach beyond social and traditional media."

Gallagher and Martiny made a similar point, saying: "Kennedy's presidential bid will certainly give him the opportunity to spread his views to a new and more mainstream audience. He has built an empire for himself in the anti-vaccine world by using his clout as a Kennedy and he will be able to build on this further during the campaign."

Jacob Neiheisel, a political scientist who teaches at the University at Buffalo, agreed. In an interview, he told Newsweek: "I think that any time someone with Kennedy's level of name recognition is given even more of a platform, there is the potential that the views that he or she espouses will spread. This is probably particularly true in the present case, given that positive affect toward the Kennedy name (largely among Democrats) may open up new audiences for his views."