Robert F. Kennedy, the unexpected populist disrupting the Democratic unity behind Joe Biden

This name is a brand. The most famous, even, in American politics. Being a Kennedy implies a legacy and guarantees media attention. It then remains to make a first name and to distinguish oneself.

On this point, Robert Francis Kennedy Jr, known as “RFK”, does not lack assets. At 69, he is engaged in an adventure that has delighted and tempted him for a long time: a candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the presidential election in 2024. While the party has logically lined up behind the incumbent, Joe Biden – a friend of his family – several polls have sounded the alarm in the ranks. They grant up to 20% of voting intentions to “RFK” in the primaries. A success that is all the more surprising in that it adopts positions far removed from those of its own camp.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr is laughing at the potential consequences of his candidacy for President Joe Biden. He has embarked on the road of transgression. With his muffled voice, due to a spasmodic dysphonia that appeared at the age of 43, he poses as a defender of freedom of expression. To sum up: “We are being lied to. » Its targets are the mainstream media, tech giants, the pharmaceutical industry and the military-industrial complex. A shame when you wear a name symbolizing the beautiful education, the networks and the vacations of Pasha in Cape Cod (Massachusetts), on the Atlantic.

In reality, his vocabulary and his obsessions place him much more in the MAGA galaxy (Make America Great Again, Trump supporters) than within the left. Steve Bannon, host of “The War Room” podcast and a former adviser to Mr. Trump, felt that the latter would be well advised to choose “RFK” as his running mate. It is “a man of integrity” abounded Alex Jones, one of the most extremist figures in the conspiratorial galaxy.

Paranoid theses

The candidate is not much in the field. It arouses attraction and curiosity in the echo chamber of social networks, where paranoid theses flourish. Listening to him, there would be “overwhelming evidence” of the involvement of the CIA, one of the intelligence agencies of the United States, in the assassination of his uncle, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in Dallas, in 1963. “RFK” also expressed doubts about the guilt of Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of killing his father, Robert, during the 1968 presidential campaign.

In 2006, in an article published by the magazine RollingStonehe assured that the Republican Party had ” stolen “ the presidential election two years earlier, to the detriment of Democrat John Kerry. “RFK” also appealed to followers of the new economy, making the case for cryptocurrencies. He says he grasped its importance in 2022, observing the strike of Canadian truck drivers against anti-Covid measures, because some participants had had their bank accounts frozen.

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