Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy foolishly made remarks that could, and were, taken out of context. He has his defenders, such as Dr Naomi Wolf, who is Jewish. Steve Kirsch, who is Jewish, also defended him. Here is what she has to say on this point. Kennedy means well but is a bit careless; was it the alcohol at the meeting? If so, drink mineral water Bob, better for you.
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/this-jewess-says-rfk-jr-is-right
“Now let us address the string of allegations that are being hurled at RFK Jr related to other alleged instances of anti-Semitism.
In the past, in multiple appearances, RFK Jr has compared current medical totalitarianism to Nazi practices. For this, he has been aggressively assailed.
I am embarrassed to say that the charges of anti-Semitism related to his having done so, have come from institutions central to preserving memories of the Holocaust; institutions ranging from The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League have come forward to condemn him. For his 2022 remarks, in a speech, about Anne Frank, in which he pointed out that in the Nazi era one might hide from tyranny whereas now there is no escape possible, the US Holocaust Museum itself came forward to condemn him — a surprising turn of events, when a museum, which is supposed to be nonpartisan and apolitical, steps into a political fray. The museum gave Politico this quote:
“Making reckless comparisons to the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews, for a political agenda is outrageous and deeply offensive. Those who carelessly invoke Anne Frank, the star badge, and the Nuremberg Trials exploit history and the consequences of hate,” the museum said Monday in a statement posted to Twitter.”
Do I think his Anne Frank remarks were perfectly worded? No indeed (hello again, mythical press officer who should be reading the candidate’s speech first).
Do I understand what he is saying? Yes I do.
I will go further. This Jewess here — who, as I often note, is the granddaughter of a woman who lost nine siblings to the Holocaust — abhors the fact that Jewish organizations are piling on and accusing RFK Jr of anti-Semitism for making comparisons of current medical tyranny to the Nazi era. I abhor this gross oversimplification and over-reaction, because RFK Jr is literally correct to draw these comparisons. I draw them myself.
Remember “Never forget”?
Anyone who has read the history of the rise of the National Socialists to power, knows that the weaponization of German society began with the coopting by the Nazis of physicians, and of doctors’ professional organizations. The full account of this brilliant and damaging innovation, which long preceded the 1933 formal ascendancy to power of the Nazis, let alone the 1939-1945 genocide programs, is in the important books, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton, and Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, by Robert N Proctor.
From where did the fully-formed murderous protocols and techniques of 2020-2023 come? They were not invented from whole cloth in the US or in the other nations in which they were launched. They were invented by the National Socialists in the 1930s.
In the early 1930s, as today, the Nazi state enlisted doctors, nurses and midwives to do the bidding of the State. In the early 1930s, as today, doctors were advanced if they joined the Nazi Party, and professional medical organizations were coopted by the Party; doctors lost licenses to practice or lost professional opportunities, if they refused to align.
As today, the National Socialists quickly divided society into two tiers, in which Aryans had rights, access to jobs, and access to state benefits and to universities, while non-Aryans were identified in multiple ways as second class citizens. The second class citizens lost the right to enter public buildings, to shop in commercial establishments, to keep their jobs, to study or teach in universities, and so on.
Does that sound familiar?
By 1939, the Nazi regime compelled nurses, doctors and midwives to identify mentally impaired infants and children. This was a program called “Aktion T4”. The parents of these children were being urged by “public health authorities” to bring these children to “pediatric clinics”. After that they were euthanized “by lethal overdoses of medication or starvation.” Of course the program expanded to include other ages.
Does this sound familiar?
We heard stories of medical murder “by lethal overdoses of medication or starvation” during the pandemic, by the score.
Indeed, does the following recent account, sound historically familiar?
“In early spring of 2021, the family of Grace Schara, a 19-year-old young woman with Down’s Syndrome, brought their daughter to an emergency room at the direction of an urgent care clinic due to wavering blood oxygen levels from COVID-19. According to her father Scott Schara, this was a grave mistake.
Schara claims the hospital, St. Elizabeth’s in Appleton, Wisconsin, became an adversary, not an ally, in treating Grace. The relationship broke down when the Schara’s were not convinced Grace needed to be put on a ventilator, a treatment encouraged by the federal government with financial incentives. Within a matter of days, Grace was dead. Her family discovered the physician put a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order in place and infused a combination of powerful anesthesia drugs into her system. As a result, they’ve filed a lawsuit claiming the hospital engaged in euthanasia.”
It was physicians and nurses tasked with being the “tip of the spear” of Nazi ideology, which saw non-Aryans or the impaired as “infectious” and “diseased”; and it was “public health” as the overarching ideology, that first established the Nazi ideals of pure and impure humans, of those who were privileged and those who were and who should be expendable.
And doctors complied.
Nazi totalitarianism, as anyone who is not historically illiterate knows - and RFK Jr knows history - started with and was predicated upon, medical or “public health” totalitarianism.
Which is all to say: RFK Jr is right to call our attention to direct echoes of our current dystopia with the early days of the Nazi regime. He is right to warn us, by using examples from this so-relevent history, where this all always goes.
It is madness to claim that no one should mention the Holocaust in relation to current redeployments of Nazi-type protocols and policies. We as Jews have always been told to be vigilant, to remember the Holocaust, to learn its lessons.
How can we deny that duty of vigilance, and of recognizing historical patterns, to leaders and colleagues who happen not to be Jewish?
I say it dishonors the memory of victims of the Holocaust to condemn anyone who seeks to learn from what happened to them, and who seeks, by learning from history, to prevent such atrocities from unfolding again.
This Jewess says: RFK Jr is not an anti-Semite for doing so. He is honoring the victims of the Nazis, and trying to draw our attention to that era’s lessons, to save us from similar horrors.
*****
I hope for the sake of this country that we turn our gazes away from sideshows and smear campaigns, that we ignore personal invective, and that we not credit baseless character assassinations.
I hope for the sake of this country that we as voters demand that our media and our national debate stay focused on the actual platforms of all of the candidates; and that we direct our collective attention to the abundance of crises that we really do face, and hear out possible solutions — not as addicts of clickbait, but as sober, discerning citizens, with an important choice to make.”