Why Is the Establishment So Scared of RFK Jr.?

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The OP has suffered a lot from deplatforming, as Daisy has documented. This has been very difficult financially, but we’re far from alone. One of the biggest public figures regularly getting shut down is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an official presidential candidate. RFK is constantly getting banned and smeared as an “anti-vaxxer.” But is he really that crazy?

Some background on RFK Jr.

RFK Jr. was born famous and privileged, except, of course, for his father and uncle getting assassinated in his childhood. For a long time, RFK Jr. was best known as an environmental lawyer. He became involved in cleaning up the Hudson River in the 1980s as part of court-mandated community service from a heroin arrest. His community service inspired him to work with multiple groups dedicated to cleaning up the Hudson, and he eventually founded Waterkeeper Alliance in 1999.

His environmental hero status didn’t last, however. In 2005, he entered the vaccine debate after being contacted by parents of vaccine-injured children. Since then, it has been hard to find an article about RFK Jr. that doesn’t begin by describing him as an “anti-vaxxer.”

For about fifteen years, most people (myself included) were content to dismiss him and the anti-vaccine movement in general as cranks. I raised my children with all their shots, trusting the medical profession to keep us healthy.

Until Covid.

As the “two weeks to flatten the curve” turned into months and sometimes years, many people began to realize there was something deeply wrong with many of our formerly-trusted institutions. We saw businesses get shut down and livelihoods ruined. Decisions were not being made in the best interests of normal Americans, those who ran small businesses and relied on institutions like the public schools.

When the jabs came along, things got weirder. Natural immunity was totally ignored and the nation was expected to submit itself as guinea pigs for this treatment that had never been tested for long-term effects. When vaccine mandates began to be implemented, RFK Jr.’s advocacy for parental choice regarding medical treatments started to sound a lot more reasonable.

It became obvious that there was a lot of lying and manipulation going on. I became increasingly suspicious of “official” voices and more willing to listen to figures like RFK Jr. I bought his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, almost as soon as it was available.

I read the whole thing. All 492 pages detailing one scam after another. You may not agree with RFK Jr. on every issue, but no one can deny that he knows his material. And no one has sued him for libel or slander, which makes me think the book is mostly accurate.

The Real Anthony Fauci sold over a million copies and has more than 23,000 reviews culminating in 4.8 stars, yet garnered no book reviews from legacy media.

So, why are the Democrats so afraid of him?

On pages 142-142, RFK Jr. recounts going from a sought-after guest speaker whose articles were regularly featured in legacy media to a total outcast. His status changed abruptly once he turned from cleaning up waterways to pharmaceutical companies. However, he has deep pockets, he’s got the Kennedy name, and he hasn’t gone away.

As the public, in general, became more and more distrustful of the Covid response, people became more willing to listen to non-mainstream voices like RFK Jr. His non-profit, Children’s Health Defense, saw its profits double in 2020.

His “Defeat the Mandates” rally in January 2022 was attended by over 30,000 people.

After The Real Anthony Fauci was published, Tucker Carlson hosted RFK Jr. more regularly. The two men had an interview on April 19, the day RFK Jr. announced his plan to run as a Democratic presidential candidate. On April 24, five days later, Fox fired Tucker, leading to speculation that Tucker’s willingness to give RFK Jr. a large platform was part of the reason for his dismissal.

RFK Jr. has been interviewed by the likes of Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson. Despite being endlessly labeled “crazy” and “extremist,” after watching him interact with a variety of hosts, he comes across as anything but.

After immense social pressure, Instagram had to reinstate his original account as well as his campaign account once he announced his presidential bid. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has endorsed RFK, much to the outcry of the MSM. He’s proven difficult to silence.

He would be very impressive in a presidential debate.

Rather than name-calling, if RFK Jr. is so dead-wrong about vaccines and children’s health, why doesn’t anyone actually engage him?

People refuse to engage in arguments with RFK Jr. because they can’t. He’s a long-time trial lawyer, so he’s good at arguing, and he’s also very, very intelligent. He’s comfortable reading scientific material and understands much of the debates around childhood health and vaccines in a way that many people, even many college-educated people, just don’t.

For example, in The Real Anthony Fauci, on pages 285-286, he discusses the debate between Louis Pasteur and Antoine Bechamp back in the 19th century. To simplify: Pasteur is the guy who realized that germs spread diseases. He posited that, by keeping environments germ-free, we could avoid infections. Obviously, there is a lot of truth in this. It is the model Western healthcare runs on.

Bechamp, however, who lived at about the same time as Pasteur, argued that it wasn’t so simple. He thought we could never kill every imaginable germ, nor should we try to. Instead, Bechamp thought our time would be better spent focusing on optimal nutrition and basic sanitation so that our bodies would be best able to fight off whatever harmful germs came along. We know, at this point, that there is truth in this as well, and RFK Jr. uses Bechamp’s line of thinking to posit that maybe we should focus more on higher-quality food and a healthier environment for children rather than more pharmaceutical products.

There is nothing crazy about this, and in fact, the more we uncover about the importance of the microbiome in our intestines, the more it makes sense. In David Quammen’s book The Tangled Tree, featuring the lifetime work of microbiologist Carl Woese, he puts forth the recent research indicating that we understand the microscopic world far less than we think we do. Simply lumping microscopic life forms into “good” and “bad” categories, and then trying to kill off all the “bad” ones, cannot work when the lines between the species are fairly blurry.

Many scientifically-literate individuals understand this to varying degrees, and this is part of the reason that PhDs displayed the most persistent suspicion around the Covid vaccines. Time has proved them correct, as we find that the jabs were, at best, fairly ineffective and, at worst dangerous for certain groups.

Controversial or not, he gets the word out.

And this all goes to prove that RFK Jr. understands issues at a level that most public figures just don’t. His stances are definitely debatable, but they are not unhinged and they don’t come out of nowhere. However, because understanding his point of view well enough to engage in serious argument requires an understanding of both science and history, most pundits find it far simpler to just call him crazy and refuse to let him speak.

But RFK Jr. gets his message out anyway, finding alternative outlets, doing his best to expose the inner workings between Big Government and Big Business.

And this is probably why RFK Jr. is such a thorn in the side of the Democratic establishment. He doesn’t play along with most of the big donors he’s supposed to play along with. He has watched the Democratic Party go from being anti-war, anti-corporate, and pro-free speech to being the party of lockstep conformity. No other family represents the old Democratic Party the way the Kennedy clan does; he is in a unique position to point out the ways in which the Democratic Party has morphed into something completely different than it was even twenty years ago.

RFK Jr. also has a pulse on using media in a way that most establishment figures don’t. During his recent interview with Jordan Peterson, he referenced the first televised presidential debate back in 1960, when young, handsome John F. Kennedy mopped the floor with Richard Nixon.

The way in which his uncle used the newest form of media to his advantage sixty years ago obviously made an impression on RFK Jr. He said that Trump won the 2016 election, in part, because he used Twitter to his advantage, even though legacy media treated his campaign as a joke. RFK Jr. believes that the 2024 race will be hugely influenced by podcasts, and he has a real advantage here because, unlike so many other candidates, he is ready and willing to sit down and debate for two or three hours at a time.

He’s an interesting candidate.

I should make it clear, again, that I disagree with RFK Jr. on plenty of issues. I used to work in oil and gas, and I think his characterization of “clean” wind and solar is way off. I could argue with him on that.

But I’m happy he’s out there, throwing rocks at establishment windows and forcing powerful figures to either explain themselves or prove by their silence that they have something to hide.

What are your thoughts? Is RFK Jr. a viable candidate? What do you think of him, pros and cons? Do you think he has any chance in his presidential run?

Let’s discuss him, the media response, and his candidacy in the comments section.

About Marie Hawthorne

A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.