In 2007, the ALA conference featured a speech by RFK, Jr. In 2021, ALA published a news story about his membership in the disinformation dozen in one of their weekly email newsletters.
This past Wednesday, April 19th, RFK, Jr. announced his 2024 Presidential campaign. Generally I am allergic to political speeches, but I found his to be genuine. He spoke of uniting the country in a manner I wish the library profession had embraced during the past six or seven years of heated division.
Unlike the divisive Twitter troll Trump, RFK, Jr. presents himself as a uniting figure. He expresses compassion for diverse segments of society, including the poor, while avoiding cliched social justice rhetoric. Also unlike Trump, he is a political insider, yet in my opinion he is a far greater threat to the establishment, not just in his willingness to take on the pharmaceutical industry but also to speak out against the surveillance state, censorship, and the dangers of various 4th IR technologies such as CBDCs. Not to mention his willingness to call out the CIA.
For all these reasons I don’t think his candidacy will be allowed to stand. If the establishment thwarted Bernie Sanders, surely they will do everything they can to block RFK, Jr., starting with an elaborate media smear campaign against him.
At the very least, though, his candidacy will bring some important issues into the political debate, issues that the library profession should care about and should be discussing. The question is, how will the profession address his candidacy? Will it discuss the topics he is bringing to the fore or dismiss him from the get-go as a misinformation spreader? Will he be treated as the new Trump, even with the old Trump still around? Time will tell.
Top image: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.jpg/ Wikimedia Commons
Although he later apologized, I can't forgive the insanity and offensiveness of his statements about Jews being better off under the Nazis than Americans under a vaccine mandate.
From the CNN website: "At a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, DC, on Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likened vaccine policies in the US to the actions of a totalitarian state, even suggesting Anne Frank was in a better situation when she was hiding from the Nazis.
'Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did,' said Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, in a speech at the Lincoln Memorial. '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.'
Kennedy’s historically inaccurate anti-Semitic remark ignores the fact that Frank and some 6 million other Jews were murdered by Nazis. Frank, who was a teenager at the time, hid in an attic in the Netherlands, not Germany, before she was caught and was sent to a concentration camp, where she died."
I am way too disgusted to ever vote for him. That is in no way the kind of talk that will unite this country.
To be fair, I think that statement was taken out of context. I believe what he meant is that if vaccine mandates were imposed worldwide, and other totalitarian controls implemented with them, there would be nowhere to run. I have heard some Jews (with relatives who died in the Holocaust) say the same thing; however, since we haven't reached that situation (at least, not yet) I can see where those statements could come across as offensive.
If you look into the childhood vaccination schedule, it has exploded since I was a kid by orders of magnitude. So it's not completely off base to make that connection to the ever-rising rates of autism, which happened in tandem.
I worry this kind of content has the effect of fatally tarnishing the Substack (if it hasn't already), or at least discouraging potential contributors.
Anti-vaxxers are endlessly creative in producing pretexts for their stance, as illustrated in Figure 1 on page 7, so I won't bother wasting either of our time challenging yours:
Just because “common arguments” against vaccination have been and often are grapevine myth or anecdotal bias-confirmation doesn’t mean that any given suspicion against any given vaccine should be tossed aside out of hand. NOR is every question about the safety or efficacy of a given vaccine the same as an assertion that it is unsafe. The problem with RFK reminds me of when Louisiana (my home state) mandated the wearing of seatbelts. I was raised in the southern part of the state—lots of bridges, lots of water. I remember a guy getting on the radio one Sunday afternoon and inviting people to call in and tell their stories. Dozens of people called in and told stories of kids, parents, policemen, etc. who had been trapped in cars by seatbelts and drowned or burned to death. If one heard enough of these stories one after another, an image of “seatbelt as hazard” emerged, with every story dead on true (even though statistics show seatbelts save far more lives than they could ever take). So two questions: is compiling and relaying worst-case scenario stories part of informed consent OR disinformation when a measure will be mandatory? And is RFK doing humanity a service or disservice by doing the compiling and relaying? Because even if vaccines are a general net good, as I think they are, doesn’t human intellectual freedom mean somebody still has to do the doubting? And is someone like RFK, willing to be a gadfly on this and absorb the abuse for it, also the sort of person who might gadfly the most obviously destructive and anti-human pollyanna assertions of global corporate capitalism? Maybe?
I found the press release from when he spoke at ALA:
U.S libraries are flourishing, helping play a critical role in supporting communities
ALA hosts Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Bill Bradley, Julie Andrews, Armistead Maupin, hundreds of programs and exhibits at world's largest library conference in Washington, D.C, June 21-27, 2007.
Robert Kennedy, Jr. will join American Library Association (ALA) President Leslie Burger for a discussion on the important role we all play in preserving the environment. The program titled "A Contract With Our Future," will foster a discussion on what steps need to be taken in order to ensure that future generations live in an environment that is safe, clean, and beautiful.
Also it looks like from the comments on his speech and on the interview with Jimmy Dore that he is very popular with both Republicans and disillusioned Democrats and that people feel like he is our best hope for unifying the country and turning things around, which I tend to agree with. His speech was pro-environment, anti-war, and anti-corporate. It will be a great irony if, fed by their IV drips to NPR (which I've heard referred to as National Pentagon Radio), it is the "liberal" PMCs who campaign against him. If that happens I may have to burn my membership card and marry a trucker!
He spoke at an ALA conference in DC many years ago. Crowds was SRO.
Was that the 2007 conference I mentioned or another one? How times have changed.
I think it was 2007. Yes, I doubt they would bring him now.
He has a great political ad: https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1649190840198209537?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Although he later apologized, I can't forgive the insanity and offensiveness of his statements about Jews being better off under the Nazis than Americans under a vaccine mandate.
From the CNN website: "At a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, DC, on Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likened vaccine policies in the US to the actions of a totalitarian state, even suggesting Anne Frank was in a better situation when she was hiding from the Nazis.
'Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did,' said Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, in a speech at the Lincoln Memorial. '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.'
Kennedy’s historically inaccurate anti-Semitic remark ignores the fact that Frank and some 6 million other Jews were murdered by Nazis. Frank, who was a teenager at the time, hid in an attic in the Netherlands, not Germany, before she was caught and was sent to a concentration camp, where she died."
I am way too disgusted to ever vote for him. That is in no way the kind of talk that will unite this country.
To be fair, I think that statement was taken out of context. I believe what he meant is that if vaccine mandates were imposed worldwide, and other totalitarian controls implemented with them, there would be nowhere to run. I have heard some Jews (with relatives who died in the Holocaust) say the same thing; however, since we haven't reached that situation (at least, not yet) I can see where those statements could come across as offensive.
It's not the only time he's made that kind of comment. See https://forward.com/fast-forward/481340/every-time-rfk-jr-has-compared-vaccine-mandates-to-the-holocaust/
He also believes vaccinations cause autism.
If you look into the childhood vaccination schedule, it has exploded since I was a kid by orders of magnitude. So it's not completely off base to make that connection to the ever-rising rates of autism, which happened in tandem.
It's totally off base if you've been exposed to the scientific community's response over the years:
https://unherd.com/2023/02/the-man-who-launched-the-vaccine-wars/
Are you familiar with Edward Dowd? He has been examining excess mortality and disability statistics.
Also I did read that Unherd article when it first came out, thanks for the link.
Yes, RFK Jr would make a fabulous national and global leader during another pandemic:
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-pseudoscience/anti-vaccine-propaganda-robert-f-kennedy-jr
https://apnews.com/article/robert-kennedy-jr-presidential-campaign-9fb5ed5c8e1fd31d2a4458d44b086593
I worry this kind of content has the effect of fatally tarnishing the Substack (if it hasn't already), or at least discouraging potential contributors.
Well I for one have seen an explosion in cancers in people who had the C19 injections.
Anti-vaxxers are endlessly creative in producing pretexts for their stance, as illustrated in Figure 1 on page 7, so I won't bother wasting either of our time challenging yours:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WGlyX7_6YvlYd38GqtfeHnv6KtO_4oT7/view
Just because “common arguments” against vaccination have been and often are grapevine myth or anecdotal bias-confirmation doesn’t mean that any given suspicion against any given vaccine should be tossed aside out of hand. NOR is every question about the safety or efficacy of a given vaccine the same as an assertion that it is unsafe. The problem with RFK reminds me of when Louisiana (my home state) mandated the wearing of seatbelts. I was raised in the southern part of the state—lots of bridges, lots of water. I remember a guy getting on the radio one Sunday afternoon and inviting people to call in and tell their stories. Dozens of people called in and told stories of kids, parents, policemen, etc. who had been trapped in cars by seatbelts and drowned or burned to death. If one heard enough of these stories one after another, an image of “seatbelt as hazard” emerged, with every story dead on true (even though statistics show seatbelts save far more lives than they could ever take). So two questions: is compiling and relaying worst-case scenario stories part of informed consent OR disinformation when a measure will be mandatory? And is RFK doing humanity a service or disservice by doing the compiling and relaying? Because even if vaccines are a general net good, as I think they are, doesn’t human intellectual freedom mean somebody still has to do the doubting? And is someone like RFK, willing to be a gadfly on this and absorb the abuse for it, also the sort of person who might gadfly the most obviously destructive and anti-human pollyanna assertions of global corporate capitalism? Maybe?
I don't think it is a problem to discuss him.
I found the press release from when he spoke at ALA:
U.S libraries are flourishing, helping play a critical role in supporting communities
ALA hosts Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Bill Bradley, Julie Andrews, Armistead Maupin, hundreds of programs and exhibits at world's largest library conference in Washington, D.C, June 21-27, 2007.
Robert Kennedy, Jr. will join American Library Association (ALA) President Leslie Burger for a discussion on the important role we all play in preserving the environment. The program titled "A Contract With Our Future," will foster a discussion on what steps need to be taken in order to ensure that future generations live in an environment that is safe, clean, and beautiful.
https://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2007/june2007/acr07.htm
So since then he has written things I don't agree with, but at one point he was a promoted speaker by ALA.
I found this interview today where he compares himself to Trump... hadn't seen it when I wrote this piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z56XBj1RTtw
Also it looks like from the comments on his speech and on the interview with Jimmy Dore that he is very popular with both Republicans and disillusioned Democrats and that people feel like he is our best hope for unifying the country and turning things around, which I tend to agree with. His speech was pro-environment, anti-war, and anti-corporate. It will be a great irony if, fed by their IV drips to NPR (which I've heard referred to as National Pentagon Radio), it is the "liberal" PMCs who campaign against him. If that happens I may have to burn my membership card and marry a trucker!