crazy style in american politics

When Karl Marx said that history repeats itself after the first tragedy, he may have been thinking of the Kennedy family. Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968 at the height of his career. Sixty-five years later, his son Robert Kennedy Jr. is a leading American conspiracy theorist challenging Joe Biden for the presidency. RFK Sr probably would have won the White House. The most his son could possibly hope for was to become a symbol of the delusions of his time.

America, as Richard Hofstadter wrote a few years before RFK’s death, suffers from periodic waves of paranoia. Historian never explained why America was prone to these passing fads—from the anti-Masonic conspiracy theories of the 1820s to the Red Scare of the 1950s. Part of it must be that America is a nation forged by cults, which generate debate about the meaning of the Founding Covenant and people’s loyalty to it. In a country that tells itself it is developing into a more complete union, when things go wrong it must be due to hijacking. Cheating is a much more glamorous criminal than “shit happens.”

Today’s America is in the midst of one of Hofstadter’s waves. Its most visible elements are on the right. Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is based on the premise that Biden snatched the presidency from him in 2020. If he wins next year, there will be retribution. Such is the hold of that theory that only one of Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination — Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey — has the guts to directly refute him.

In contrast, RFK Jr.’s worldview is found across the spectrum. You hear it from counterculture liberals in Portland, Oregon, as much as from biker gatherings on Veterans Day. The gist is that science is rigged against ordinary Americans: Big pharmaceutical companies, in collusion with the CIA, manufactured the COVID-19 pandemic to increase their profits and suppress people’s freedoms; The virus was a bio-weapon created by a US-funded laboratory; Vaccines killed more people than they saved; Starting with Prozac, gun violence in America is driven by prescription drugs.

It is easy to dismiss each of these claims but it would be to miss their appeal. Our crisis must be the result of intention, not accident.

When things go wrong some group of people are to be blamed. The theory is also in Republican territory, in a less expensive form. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, vows to fight a “biomedical security state” and “choose liberty over Fauci-ism” (after Anthony Fauci, the most recognized medical face of the pandemic).

Ironically, Trump’s campaign has been damaged by his base’s belief in this conspiracy theory. He should have bragged about how his “Operation Warp Speed” produced the vaccine in record time. But he is hoisted by his petard. After incinerating the insane base, he is now its prisoner. The word vaccine rarely crossed his lips. Yet he is quite proud of that record that he does not give rise to conspiracy theories. Which leaves an opening for guys like RFK Jr.

It can’t be easy being the son of a national icon like Bobby Kennedy, whose death and the assassination of his brother John F. Kennedy are themselves the constant subject of speculative plots. But RFK Jr.’s name recognition has its benefits. It’s hard to imagine a conspiracy theorist named John Smith polling 20 percent among Democratic voters within weeks of announcing his candidacy.

It’s also hard to believe that Kennedy will beat Biden for the nomination. The president has changed the Democratic primary calendar to put South Carolina first, ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire. As in 2020, South Carolina is very likely to give Biden a landslide. Yet such challenges can sometimes lead to the presidency. Jimmy Carter was partially undone in 1980 by a bid from Ted Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s uncle. George HW Bush was damaged by Pat Buchanan’s pitchfork rebellion in 1992. RFK Jr. could help propel Trump to the presidency.

It would be a strange turn for his family’s legacy. It’s no small irony that RFK Jr.’s father and uncles may have rebuffed his worldview. Yet in a strange way, he represents today’s more isolated society in which people have replaced the lost world of their parents with an online group chat. The idea that a hidden cabal was to blame for their atomized lives found a perfect storm in the pandemic.

For some, the Kennedy name is valid.

edward.luce@ft.com