RFK Jr. courts the Nazi vote

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already made a name for himself as a loud and proud anti-vaxer, but he’s taken a hard right turn into courting Nazis to help elect him president.

The “Democratic” presidential candidate has used the cache of his family name to amass a following of mostly-right wing, anti-science zealots who believe in the erroneous claims that vaccines cause autism and the Covid-19 vaccine kills people. He’s taken the idea of using your platform for good and flipped it on its head, lending his credibility and money to dangerous junk science that has caused autistic people and their families irreparable harm. 

And now he’s going after the Jews.

On Friday he tweeted a whole bunch of nonsense about being denied a Secret Service detail (to which he is not actually entitled.) I’ll share it below not as punishment, but for context:

Direct your attention to the first two sentences of the second paragraph and you’ll spot some curious numbers. To the untrained eye, they’re just 14 and 88. Nice even numbers! But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find they’re actually Nazi dog whistles.

“The number 14 is used by white supremacists as a shorthand reference to the so-called ‘14 Words,’ which is the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world:  "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” according to the Anti-Defamation League’s website.

And as for 88, well: “88 is a white supremacist numerical code for ‘Heil Hitler,’” the ADL writes. “H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 = HH = Heil Hitler. One of the most common white supremacist symbols, 88 is used throughout the entire white supremacist movement, not just neo-Nazis.”

Oh, but wait! There’s more! “The number is frequently combined with another white supremacist numeric code, 14…in the form of 1488, 14/88, 14-88, or 8814.”

He could’ve said two weeks instead of 14 days. He could’ve said nearly three months instead of 88 days.

But he didn’t, and it doesn’t seem like a coincidence. A FiveThirtyEight poll released this week shows RFK Jr. getting a pathetic 14% of the vote compared to President Biden’s 65%. He knows there’s no way he’s going to overtake Joe, and so he’s shooting his shot at a key constituency in the Republican party: Nazis.

This new bid for attention shouldn’t feel shocking: He’s played footsie with bigots for a while now. The website Angry White Men recently tracked all the right wing conspiracy theorists and hatemongers RFK Jr. has had on his podcast since it launched in 2021—and it’s a lot. And Infowars host Alex Jones only had wonderful things to say about RFK Jr. and his various political views. Jones said: “He’s got 10% to go and he’s Alex Jones.”

As much as it pains me to say it, Jones was right. He saw in RFK Jr. the potential to burrow even farther into the darkest corners of society and team up with the dregs of the Earth in order to gain more power. Game recognize game. 

Earlier this month, the NY Post published a video that captured RFK Jr. telling other attendees at a private dinner in Manhattan that the Covid-19 vaccine is “ethnically targeted.” He continued: “Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

The implication here is, obviously, that since Jews control everything from the banks to Hollywood to the government, they also had careful input on the Covid-19 vaccine and engineered it specifically to spare our people. It’s an extra weird conclusion when you contrast it with a speech he made in January 2022 comparing vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany.

“Even in Hitler Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did,” he said to a crowd at an anti-vaxx rally. “I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible.” 

Just to recap, in Bob’s view, Jews are the villains in the Covid-19 story, and treating their victims the same—or worse!—than their relatives who perished in the Holocaust. And now he’s putting barely-coded messages in tweets in a bid to win over conservatives who agree with him.

Despite the fact that RFK Jr. will, in no uncertain terms, ever be president, it’s alarming to see a candidate so openly court white nationalists. He knows that, despite some negative attention from us pesky Jews and our allies, there’s more potential benefit than harm. 

When this gambit falls spectacularly to pieces, he can still count on his backup plan: Head of the FDA for President DeSantis.