Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has plenty of fans in Los Angeles, including at the iconic bodybuilding hub Gold's Gym, where he's been pumping iron, filming strongman-style propaganda and exposing his gray-haired chiseled chest.
The 69-year-old presidential candidate, who is a leading superspreader of vaccine skepticism and MAGA's favorite Democrat, is seducing Americans with his muscles, family name and question-everything stance, which his supporters see not as dangerous conspiracism but as the courageous truth.
His base is nowhere near large enough to secure him the nomination, but his campaign does pose a threat to a Biden reelection because it stokes left-wing distrust in democracy. Believe it or not, liberals and conservatives are converging in conspiracism. Kennedy's popularity on L.A.'s Westside, a hot spot of conspirituality — where wellness and spirituality meet conspiracy theories — explains why.
It's popular in the media to denigrate conspiracy theorists. But as a person who grew up with a father who believed the CIA was torturing him, I'm not interested in belittling Kennedy's devotees. There are many reasons to distrust the U.S. government. Vaccines are not one of them, but Kennedy's appeal goes beyond his crusade against lifesaving injections.
On Wednesday morning, I visited Gold's Gym in Venice Beach to ask members about their controversial workout companion. The verdict was split. Some dislike him because of his scaremongering against vaccines. Most asked for anonymity because they have to share a gym with him.
One 50-year-old man told me he sees Gold's as a sacred space that the candidate is using as a ploy, unlike other legendary regulars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, a longtime bodybuilder. He said Kennedy has been a regular for less than a year.
But some of Kennedy's other gym mates are excited about him, such as Max, a 31-year-old Santa Monica resident whom I met on his way out of Gold's.
"I like that he can leg-press five plates," said Max, who told me he had recently befriended Kennedy at the gym. "It's nice to know he's in shape and he takes care of himself. Not to hate too hard, but seeing Biden being like 80 years old and kinda falling apart, you wanna see somebody who's kind of at the top of their game."
Max likes Kennedy's outreach across the political spectrum. He's impressed by Kennedy's background as an environmental lawyer and his criticism of U.S. militarism abroad. But he fears the media won't let him win, by exaggerating his activism against vaccines. "The deck is stacked against him unfairly," he said.
When I mentioned experts' critiques of his vaccine claims and why I believe Kennedy is knowingly misleading people, Max agreed that falsehoods are harmful. "But," he added, "I'd rather him be wrong and be able to have an open dialogue about it, instead of living in a culture where you mention it and suddenly you're like, ostracized, or you're a pariah because you questioned the mainstream."
It's a common sentiment among people drawn to Kennedy. Many have sought validation from figures like Kennedy because they felt attacked when they raised questions about vaccines, particularly during the pandemic.
Max, for one, says he lost faith in the establishment and interest in voting after Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. But Kennedy has renewed his interest and hope. "I'm kind of having a Bernie moment with RFK where I'm like, maybe there's somebody who can do things differently," he said. "But then again I'm like, am I just being tricked?"
Kennedy's message can be spellbinding. He condemns the U.S. empire in Latin America. He rails against the collection of our data, which is used to manipulate us. He decries industry influence in Washington. Yet he freely contradicts himself. What's going to protect us from corrupt corporate CEOs, in his opinion? Free markets, he says. In other words, letting them do as they please.
No wonder he's supported by tech titans like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey as well as by prolific grifters like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone.
Kennedy's crusade against vaccines, which has harmed vulnerable people, goes back years. His activism in Samoa, for example, contributed to a drop in immunizations, leading to a measles outbreak that killed 83 people, including children. When I asked Kennedy's campaign about this, his press team denied his role, emailing me a timeline that omitted crucial details.
I also asked about Kennedy's repeated false claims that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. Thimerosal hasn't been used in children's vaccines since 2001. His team replied with the false claim that aluminum in vaccines is the true culprit. But infants are exposed to dramatically more aluminum through diet than vaccines. To get away with spouting flagrant disinformation, Kennedy is banking on charisma and the fact that nobody has time to fact-check everything.
There's another reason he's gained traction. Many people like to feel they have special knowledge, which he seems to provide. The new book "Conspirituality" by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker, hosts of a podcast of the same name, offers insights about the genesis of new age delusions.
The authors trace the rise of QAnon yoga practitioners, anti-vaccine energy healers and life coaches to eugenics, a late 19th century white supremacist movement that sought to create a superior human race through selective breeding and forced sterilizations. As the book explains, Eugen Sandow, the father of bodybuilding and an influence on modern yoga, took his stage name from eugenics. Weakness to Sandow was not an effect of inequality or oppression, "but a hereditary taint that strong discipline and better breeding could extinguish."
For some California conspiritualists, poor health reflects poor character. To this crowd, Kennedy's buff body is a sign of moral strength and discipline. "Even though in spiritual circles there's a lot of talk about community and compassion, the dirty little secret is that it's often quite self-absorbed," Walker told me.
Kennedy's machismo, displayed at Gold's Gym, speaks to the allure of hyper-individualism and mind-over-body fallacies. These ideas aren't Republican or Democratic. They're deeply American, and they divide and debilitate.
Kennedy doesn't stand for our collective strength. He's joined a long line of conspiracy-mongers selling delusions and distrust to win power over the weak.
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