June 6 marks the death of Robert F. Kennedy, who succumbed to an assassin’s bullet during his quixotic quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Would he have succeeded? Would he have beaten Richard Nixon? As president would he have healed a nation torn by racial strife, as he’d promised during the campaign? We’ll never know.

What we do know is that Kennedy has been heavily mythologized in the 53 years since his tragic demise, to the point where many progressives of a certain age often lament, “If only RFK was alive today. What a great candidate he’d be.”

Actually, RFK would be canceled with all deliberate speed. In our hyper-woke culture, he’d be roadkill:

1. As biographer Evan Thomas has pointed out, “Kennedy was paternalistic towards women and did not regard them as victims of discrimination.” As attorney general, he had little interest in hiring women for important jobs, and when an LBJ White House aide criticized his “disappointing” track record, he acidly replied in writing that he would consider it “a real favor if you would furnish me a list of girl lawyers who are qualified.”

I shudder to think how speedily #girllawyers would trend on Twitter. Or how quickly his mysterious history with doomed Marilyn Monroe would metastasize on Facebook.

2. Kennedy was notoriously homophobic. When gay author Gore Vidal put his arm on Jackie Kennedy’s shoulder at a White House reception, RFK ostentatiously removed Vidal’s arm. When gay civil rights leader Bayard Rustin was organizing the famed March on Washington, RFK assailed him as “that old black fairy.” He also slurred writer James Baldwin for being gay, and requested an FBI dossier on Baldwin.

Social media would chew that stuff up.

3. As attorney general he sanctioned wiretaps on Martin Luther King’s home and office. He requested the taps and signed off on them. Imagine how those incontestable facts would play today, 24/7, coupled with Kennedy’s evasive responses. Not even his top campaign aides could get a straight answer about the taps. Peter Edelman later recalled that Kennedy “would tell you about A, B, and C, but not D, E, and F.” Another aide, Fred Dutton, said that “you could only go so far, and then (RFK) would clam up.”

4. It’s true that he sought to unite blue-collar whites and inner-city Blacks, and indeed that was (and remains) a laudable ambition. But today, via the wonders of technology, he’d be attacked as a two-faced hypocrite, a typical pol who just tells his audience what it wants to hear. Imagine the split-screen treatment he’d get on cable news, and in viral videos on YouTube: When he campaigned in downtrodden Black neighborhoods, he talked up racial integration and stressed the rhetoric of compassion; when he campaigned among white blue-collar voters (his aides called them “backlash” voters), he erased the racial integration talk and stressed the need for “law and order.”

I’m not trying to denigrate or defend the guy. I’m merely pointing out that today, in a culture that can kill a young person’s career by simply dredging up old tweets that piss off some people somewhere, there is an exceedingly high risk of being fatally caricatured by one’s perceived worst actions. Evan Thomas, the Kennedy biographer, wrote that RFK typically “operated with a mix of starchy principle and expediency” – but today, his expediency and his un-woke impulses would probably cancel him on the altar of purity.

Still, one speech he delivered – way back in 1964 – rings true today as the perfect rebuke to the MAGA mob’s festering neo-fascism. Check this out:

“There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed…Frustrated by change, they condemn the wisdom, the motives, and even the patriotism of those who seek to contend with the realities of the future …

“The answer to these voices cannot simply be reason, for they speak irrationally. The answer cannot come merely from government, no matter how conscientious or judicious. The answer must come from within the American democracy. It must come from an informed national consensus which can recognize futile fervor and simple solutions for what they are – and reject them quickly.“

Thanks, RFK. There’s no way to cancel that.