The conspiracy joins a list of other claims by the presidential candidate, including the suggestion at an anti-COVID-19 vaccine demo that life was more difficult today than it was for those attempting to flee Nazi Germany

  • MissO@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    His father and uncles would weep to see what he’s become.

    Edited to change uncle to uncles. I forgot Ted somehow.

    • kdj770@lemmy.world
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      They were both FAR from being upright citizens (what do you expect from a family that made their money illegally?), but they weren’t outright insane.

      • MissO@lemmy.world
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        I agree they were incredibly flawed and that Joe Sr was a shady, sleazy piece of work and a monster for what he did to Rosemary. Having said that, they’d still weep and cringe in shame if they could witness what that grasping, amoral spoiler is doing to further damage the family name.

    • fidodo@lemm.ee
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      He specifically called out Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. Cultures that cares a lot about health and community and most the Asian countries already masked way before COVID.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      The Jews I know stayed inside too. Well except when some of them had to go to work as medical professionals where they risked their lives to save lives.

      If we have to choose between antisemites and Jews I’m hell bent on keeping the Jews. Hell even if we don’t have to choose, let’s still get rid of the antisemites. They just make our society worse for everyone.

      • cmbabul@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I know some Jewish people must be assholes statistically that’s just how large groups of people are, but I have personally never met a Jewish person that I don’t consider a super cool person

        • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Disclaimer: I might be biased because I’m Jewish.

          That being said, I think there are two factors that lead to more Jews being “super cool people.”

          The first is that our religion is very against proselytizing. You’re not going to have a Jew say “hey, you really need to convert and observe all the laws of kashrut or you’ll burn in hell.” (We don’t even really have a concept of hell.) In fact, we’re so against proselytizing that if you walked into a synagogue tomorrow and told the Rabbi that you wanted to convert, they’d turn you away multiple times.

          The second factor is our history of persecution. We know what it’s like to have someone try to impose their views on us or attack us for being different. Once you know how that feels, you’re less likely to do that to others.

          Not trying to impose your views on others and being accepting of people for being different are two big steps towards being a super cool person.

          Plus, pretty much all our holidays have some really cool meals associated with them. That helps too.

          • JBonLemmy@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m Jewish, and I actually don’t like the whole “Rabbi will turn you away” thing. It’s an arrogant and elitist old tradition that it’s best we do away with. Otherwise I agree with you on everything else. Especially the food.

            • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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              The reason for a Rabbi turning you away isn’t to be elitist. It’s to make sure that the person trying to convert really wants to convert. If you return to the rabbi three times, then you’ve shown commitment and aren’t just trying to convert to “try out Judaism before converting to another religion.”

              This tradition is based on the story of Naomi and Ruth. Naomi moved to a land with her 3 sons. They married women there but died soon after. Noami decided to move back to the land of her birth and her daughters-in-law said they’d come with her. Noami told them to find lives in their own land and two of the three left. Ruth remained and wouldn’t be dissuaded no matter how much Naomi told her to go. That’s why we turn away converts 3 times.

    • sab@kbin.social
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      I’m suspecting this guy belongs in the “untreated mental health issues” box along with the likes of Kanye West, rather than in the “useful moronic narcissist puppy” category of Trump and Giuliani or the straight up evil one with Bannon and McConnell.

      Then again, the lines are blurred.

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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    It’s so exhausting to live in a timeline where bullcrap like this is elevated, funded, and taken seriously instead of being ignored or discouraged.

    Promoting anti-science, anti-reality conspiracy theories as the basis for political popularity just drives another stake into the heart of the faith and trust it takes to maintain democracy. I just wish we were as zealous about defending democracy from corrosive nonsense like this shit as we are about criminalizing the homeless

  • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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    Tell this to one of my clients, a sweet little cranky Jewish man suffering from bone cancer at 65. We lost him during the first year of the pandemic while he was going through chemo as a last attempt to save him. The facility he was in went into lock down, he ended up with Covid and was moved out of the cancer wing into an isolated wing where he pretty much just waited to die. He still called us regularly right up until the end.

    His last words to me, between coughs, were “be well.”

    Fuck this asshole and anyone who believes him.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is a very old bigotry indeed. Anti-Semites have been blaming Jewish people for plagues since at least the Black Death.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      It may not be germane to the situation, but I believe the Egyptians were blaming Jewish people for plagues a number of years before that…

      • markr@lemmy.world
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        So the Jewish people were never enslaved in Egypt. The entire Passover myth is without any historical foundation. The Jewish people were conquered and enslaved by the Babylonians and eventually liberated by the Persian emperor Cyrus. Oddly that real historical event is not celebrated in Jewish culture.

          • markr@lemmy.world
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            It would be equivalently odd if there was another messianic Jew who rose from the dead and was observed by multiple eye witnesses who documented the miracle.

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    I will down vote every post with this piece of shit in the title.

    Paying media attention to these morons and their bullshit is a waste of anybody’s time and attention.

    I’m over being rage baited just ignore it.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      I’m considering dropping a podcast that I support on Patreon because the host keeps talking about this clown. She’s talking about his numbers, but he shouldn’t be made mainstream. Stop legitimizing this horse shit, even if he’s pulling solid numbers. Those people are nuts and we don’t need them.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    So like… I’m curious. What’s his game plan? Is he just utterly, completely batshit insane? He has to know that this sort of shit makes him categorically unelectable.

    On the other hand… this is a concerning example of how far and fast the Overton window has shifted in American politics. That this is no longer considered something that would get you summarily thrown out of polite society has some very troubling implications.

    • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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      He’s insane, he knows he can’t beat Biden, but he’s using the platform to spread his ideas about vaccines and such and maybe get Biden to compromise. What’s crazier is that Republicans are funding his campaign in the hopes of weakening Biden for next year.

      • fqux@lemmy.world
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        What’s crazier is that Republicans are funding his campaign in the hopes of weakening Biden for next year.

        How’s the crazy?

        • SulaymanF@lemmy.world
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          Perhaps crazy isn’t the right word. It’s very unusual for Republicans to support an environmentalist who disagrees with much of their platform. It’s also considered a political dirty trick to undermine a rival politician like this.

          • tburkhol@lemmy.world
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            I’m less convinced that he’s an environmentalist and more suspicious that he just likes the legal fees associated with environmental law. And probably likes the speaking fees Republican backers offer to a “liberal” anti-vaxxer.

    • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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      The right has succeeded enormously in changing the definition of “free speech” for a large segment of the population to mean “speech without public criticism or outrage.”

      That guarantees that we will see lots of horrific people get into office and get the spotlight, because anyone who asks “why are we platforming these people” will be accused of “cancel culture” and “being anti-free speech” by all the conservatives and even some liberals, now.

      Forget that the people I want ostracized from major public platforms are actual, literal nazis, saying nazi things and actively working to enact a system which will enable actual genocide. That doesn’t matter any more to a lot of liberal suburbanites who believe that free speech is somehow sacrosanct, and have accepted the new definition.

      It guarantees the Overton window will continue shifting to the right at an alarmingly fast rate unless we enact laws to stop it, which we can’t because of how broad the first amendment is.

    • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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      The only thing I can see is that he’s hoping that people vote for him because of his famous name. He’s hoping everyone says “Kennedy… That name sounds presidential” and checks the box with his name in it.

      And if anyone thinks this will actually work, I’ve got some NFTs to sell them.

  • solstice@lemmy.world
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    Jews tend to be educated intelligent people who know to wash their hands, wear a mask, get vaccinated, and stay the fuck at home. I’d imagine they also mostly have white collar jobs that allowed them to work from home and avoid exposure. So once again, just like the black plague, people misunderstand a correlation for causation. Jews didn’t poison the well, this asshole is just too fucking stupid to wear a mask and get vaccinated.

    • pumpsnabben@sopuli.xyz
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      If I recall correctly they were also one of the first in the world to approve the use of mRNA vaccines against covid.

      • solstice@lemmy.world
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        Who, Israel? I didn’t know that but sounds right, Israeli tech and education is world class. I meant jewish populations in general around the world though, who tend to be educated and affluent.

        It’s worth pointing out this isn’t true for all jews, the hassidic population of New York for example is famously anti-vax. Thanks to them, things like measles and polio are coming back in NY. They tend to be isolated though so hopefully it’ll stay in their communities. I hate plague rats, religious and secular, so fuck 'em.

        https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/nyregion/measles-jewish-community.html

        https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6819a4.htm

        • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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          Having spent some time around Orthodox groups (my parents belonged to the synagogue so it was free for me to belong there also), many Orthodox are as anti-science as evangelical Christians.

          One rabbi would regularly give sermons talking about how science was wrong and the Torah was right. He’d point to science “changing their story” and how the Torah always said the same thing. Nevermind that science “changes its story” based on new evidence and interpretations of the Torah have definitely changed over the centuries.

          So it saddened me, but didn’t surprise me when Chasidic groups acted as though COVID wasn’t a threat and all that was needed was for everyone to get together (unmasked) in a small space and pray really hard.

          • solstice@lemmy.world
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            One of the last nails in the coffin for me before I went 100% atheist was when I was at a Jewish “youth group” religious gathering where they brainwash kids. They were trying to tell us earth and the universe etc is ~5000 years old. I was old enough to know that is absurd but naive enough to not know there’s a lot of evil or delusional people out there that would lie to you about such things. I was so frustrated and confused, almost to the point of tears. Looking back, that was a major loss of innocence for me. Ever since then I view any religious nutjob with suspicion and fear tbh because they are unhinged and willing to believe anything without a shred of evidence; indeed they hold their beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Terrifying. Bunch of plague rats, the lot of them.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
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    “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” Kennedy added.

    Ok, I think it’s a fact that covid affected races differently, but to say we don’t know if it was deliberate or not sounds fucking psycho! So did he think it’s controlling covid?

    • Silverseren@kbin.social
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      Yeah, it’s technically true, but only because different ethnic groups have different genetic resistances to pathogens. So there are some diseases, for example, that would be more severe for those of Jewish ethnicity than others. It really depends on the source of the pathogen and what groups of people were exposed to its during its rapid mutation and spread period.

      I do love that he so credulously spreads the claim that Covid didn’t harm Chinese people. Who really is dumb enough to believe the CCP when they were claiming 0 deaths from Covid?

      • OldWoodFrame@lemmy.world
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        I don’t know if there’s literally any evidence or fully made up, but racial differences are always like “X was 15% less likely to cause severe disease in Y group” so regardless “Jews were spared” is 100% an anti-semetic lie.

        • Silverseren@kbin.social
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          Oh, 100%. There’s obviously non-biological factors as well, as others have noted in this comment section. The type of jobs that many members of the Jewish community have are more conducive to work from home and they were fully on board with masking and social distancing as a community. So those factors would also result in them, as a whole, having lower Covid rates in general.

          And, of course, those actions are not universal in the Jewish community. For example, the Chasidic community was more likely to hold anti-vaccine, anti-masking, and other such views on Covid. And, thus, it’s unsurprising that they had much higher rates of Covid infection than the other Jewish communities. With over half of the entire Chasidic community getting Covid, compared to 7% and 10% in the Non-Orthodox and Modern Orthodox communities.

          Here’s some data on all of that: https://www.jewishdatabank.org/databank/search-results/study/1114

  • Landrin201@lemmy.ml
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    This man got to go on JOE FUCKING ROGANS PODCAST and say whatever he wanted.

    I’m so sick of major outlets giving antisemites so much airtime to say whatever the fuck they feel like. It’s terrifying to watch this shit as a Jew.

    • Doug [he/him]@midwest.social
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      Also as a gentile who cares about their fellow human beings.

      I’m also surprised that it says he’s trying as a Dem. Hardly a perfect group but generally that kind of rhetoric is kept in the GOP, voters and candidates alike.

  • ShooBoo@lemmy.world
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    I have no idea why he is even there. As far as I can tell it is just because of his last name. Why is anyone listening to him or care what he has to say? I can’t even get passed that part.

    • Redditgee@lemmy.world
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      He gets posted by pro Russian war supporters, a lot, who act like he represents what America really wants. That should tell you enough about the guy.

    • halferect@lemmy.world
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      The sxary part is his polling isn’t awful and it’s because that Kennedy name gets you a lot. Uniformed voters hear the name Kennedy and think oh! He must be awesome

  • Hexadecimalkink@lemmy.ml
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    I thought it would be obvious by now; If you’re running for elected office and you’re coming from a non-mainstream position, or you’re a darkhorse candidate: do not mention Jews, Israel, Judaism, Palestine, Palestinians. Like, just don’t say anything about it. If someone asks for your opinion on a current event, quote the UN charter of human rights. It’s that easy.

    Anyway the fact this guy is still making vaccines a central part of his campaign shows he’s not playing to win.