2021: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Switzerland: “I Stand Here With You”
What follows is my report as it appeared in a small Swiss newspaper.
On Thursday evening, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw on social media that a demonstration had been announced for November 12, 2021, in Bern, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a speaker. It was organized by Public Eye on Science, aka the farmer Urs Hans from the Tösstal. At first I thought it was a joke. But other familiar names were also listed, including Dr. Thomas Binder and the pharmacist Kati Schepis.
As soon as I heard a Kennedy was coming, I asked the editor-in-chief whether he would travel to Bern. He said no. So we agreed I would go as a “reporter” for Die Ostschweiz and capture the mood. On Friday at noon, my daughter and I arrived in Bern. The demonstration was not at the Federal Palace, but in Wankdorf at Rosalia Wenger Square, a place I had never heard of despite having lived in Bern years ago. The location felt chosen to keep the event out of sight.
Rosalia Wenger (1906–1989) wrote about a life marked by hard work and social invisibility: child labor, factory work, domestic service, an unhappy marriage. Her readers appreciated that she gave a voice to people rarely portrayed in literature: workers, small farmers, women. In a strange way, that framing also fit the crowd gathering here. More than a few looked like the kind of people who keep a country running without being celebrated for it.
Around noon it was still quiet. My daughter and I shared a slice of pizza from Coop Take Away and watched the demonstrators arrive. Some wore costumes, others carried large signs. One woman had a bicycle with a sign reading “I am a Bernese,” a nod to JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner.” I laughed, then paused. The gesture was really about citizenship: rights, dignity, and what it means to belong. Switzerland, after all, was one of the few places where citizens could actually vote on the Covid measures.
My social work colleague from Frauenfeld joined us, and I was glad she did. We sat on the red chairs in front of Coop and waited. Before Kennedy arrived, Kati Schepis and Thomas Binder showed up, apparently coming from a press conference organized that morning by Aletheia in cooperation with Children’s Health Defense, where Kennedy had already spoken.
After some back-and-forth, my eight-year-old daughter and I were allowed into the backstage area. She didn’t like it. We speak English at home, and she told me I had sold it to her as a “VIP tent.” She said she wasn’t an “important person” and wanted to leave. I called my colleague and lifted my daughter over the barrier.
I began taking a few photos while Dr. Binder spoke. Then a shadow fell across the scene. I stepped back in shock, almost pushing my phone into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s face. He had arrived.
He was tall, wearing a gray business suit that looked tailored, and dark gray ankle boots. Describing his presence is difficult. He stood still, calm, larger than life, like someone who has been watched his entire life. RFK Jr. is not the kind of man you make small talk with.
I was only equipped with my phone, so I sat on the ground in front of the cameras. Other media were there too. I saw no Blick or 20 Minuten logos. A photographer who claimed to be from Keystone argued with security and was eventually let in.
Kennedy spoke from Urs Hans’ converted trailer, with simultaneous translation. His voice is hoarse. He has a neurological condition called spasmodic dysphonia, but after the first moments I stopped noticing it. What mattered was the intensity and the plainness of his delivery. He didn’t come across as polished or theatrical. He came across as convinced.
He began with a blunt premise: no government in the world gives up power voluntarily. The power governments had taken in the past twenty months was not temporary, he said, but would become permanent. Cooperating with tyranny, in his view, signals that more measures can be introduced because people will not resist. The duty of citizens in a democracy was to resist now.
He argued that ordinary democratic procedure had been bypassed: laws normally require publication, explanation, and justification. Under Covid, he claimed, that process had collapsed into commands. Put on a mask. Keep your distance. Close your business. Stay home. In his telling, the message was simple: do what you’re told, your former rights no longer apply.
He described fear as the key instrument: afraid people lose the ability to think critically. He spoke of a kind of international Stockholm syndrome, with people grateful to their overseers because submission felt like the only way back to normal life.
He said he had come to Switzerland because he saw it as the last refuge of real democracy in Europe, and because the world was watching what Switzerland would decide on November 28, 2021. He urged people to tell friends and neighbors to love freedom more than they fear a virus. There are worse things than death, he said. Worse is living as a slave.
After the speech, Kennedy spoke with people he seemed to know and took selfies with members of the crowd, including representatives of Mass-Voll. It never occurred to me to ask him for one. I didn’t want to impose. When he moved in my direction, he seemed distracted, searching for a personal item. A few minutes later he left. A media Q&A had probably been planned, but in the end we were simply lucky he came at all.
On the train ride home, masks were still enough. Yet between Bern and Zurich, an announcement urged passengers to end the pandemic by getting vaccinated, “if you can.” I was surprised to hear even the national railway promoting it. Perhaps it was official. Perhaps it was an overzealous conductor.
My daughter was quiet on the way back, her eyes almost closing. I thought again of the Kennedy family and the shadow that seems to follow it. On June 7, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. His son was fourteen.
My daughter’s favorite TV show was Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. In 1968, Fred Rogers addressed the assassination of RFK with puppets on black-and-white television. In one scene, Daniel the Tiger gives Lady Aberlin a balloon, asks her to inflate it, and they watch the air escape.
“Where is all the air that was in the balloon?” Daniel asks.
“It is out there in the air,” Lady Aberlin says.
“Do you think it is now part of our air?”
“That’s right,” she replies.