Vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr compared medical institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a “Nazi death camp” in resurfaced footage from autism conferences for parents.
Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services also compared vaccinating children to “sex abuse in the Catholic church” during remarks at the events.
The comments resurfaced in footage, first reported by NBC News, of RFK Jr speaking at a series of conferences put on by the group AutismOne, which has adopted the slogan “Make our Children Healthy Again.”
At one of the conferences in 2013, RFK Jr was asked by a member of the audience: “Why hasn’t the CDC acknowledged autism?”
RFK Jr said it was not for him to say “why someone else is doing something” before launching into a conspiracy theory about “secret” vaccine letters and how institutions like the CDC “go to the extremes.”
“To me, this is like the Nazi death camps,” he said. “What happened to these kids, one in 31 boys in this country, is you know, their minds are being robbed.”
His views on the CDC hadn’t changed by 2019, when he spoke at the conference again and likened the federal agency’s vaccine division to “fascism.”
“The word ‘fascism’ in Italian means a bundle of sticks, and what it means is the bundle is more important than the sticks,” RFK Jr said.
“The institution, CDC and the vaccine program, is more important than the children that it’s supposed to protect.”
The potential future health secretary also said that sex abuse within the Catholic Church was “the perfect metaphor for what’s happening to us” in terms of vaccines.
“It’s the same reason we had a pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church,” he said. “Because people were able to convince themselves that the institution, the church, was more important than these little boys and girls who were being raped.”
“And everybody kept their mouth shut,” he added. “And you know, that is the perfect metaphor for what’s happening to us.”
The Independent has contacted Trump’s transition team and the CDC for comment.
RFK Jr, who could soon be in charge of the nation’s health, has previously likened vaccinations to Nazi Germany.
At a rally against Covid-19 mandates in January 2022, he compared US vaccine policies to the actions of an authoritarian state, suggesting that Anne Frank was in a better situation while hiding from the Nazis.
“Even in Hitler Germany, you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” he said at the Lincoln Memorial at the time.
His organization, Children’s Health Defense, has advocated against vaccinations, and spread the baseless claim that vaccines cause autism.
In his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy also falsely claimed that Anthony Fauci colluded with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to exaggerate the extent of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 70-year-old’s Instagram account was deactivated by Meta in 2021 after he kept spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Kennedy dynasty heir also spread a baseless, racist and antisemitic conspiracy theory about the virus last year, claiming the virus targets “Caucasians and Black people” while “Ashkenazi Jews and [Chinese people]” are the most immune.
“The claim that COVID-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and Black people is deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” according to a statement from the Anti-Defamation League at the time.
Despite all this, RFK Jr has said he’s fully vaccinated apart from against Covid-19, adding that his children are also fully vaccinated.
“I’ve always said I’m not anti-vaccine,” he said in an interview with TV personality Dr. Phil. “I’m never going to take anybody’s vaccine. If vaccines are working for you, God bless you. I believe in choice and liberty, that government shouldn’t be ordering people to take a product, particularly one that is protected from liability.”
