Michael Hiltzik: RFK Jr. gets around to blaming the Jews

It has been well noted that, whatever their starting points, conspiracy theorists sooner or later get around to blaming the Jews.

During a press dinner in New York last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is hoping to ride his portfolio of chuckleheaded conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and all sorts of other things into a presidential campaign, went there last week.

"We've put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes," he said, delivering his spiel to dining companions who heard him out with increasingly evident discomfiture. "In fact, COVID-19 — there's an argument that it is ethnically targeted.... COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."

The dinner took place Tuesday, but videos from the event were first . Kennedy tried to but, as I'll show, that fell into the category of erecting what Winston Churchill might have called a bodyguard of lies. Despite his subsequent disclaimer, the import of his words was that Jews