Like Marjorie Taylor Greene on Steroids

The GOP’s candidate for governor of North Carolina is a hate-filled, dangerous bigot.

Photo of NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, courtesy of The New York Times

In a party of extremists, it’s hard to stand out. But somehow Mark Robinson of North Carolina manages to.

Not only is he a Holocaust denier, he’s also virulently anti-gay, anti-abortion, a misogynist, a conspiracy peddler and a dangerous gun freak.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the GOP base there loves him, and they have nominated him for governor. 

Robinson has a few things going for him. He’s Black but somehow MAGA, which lets racists claim that they’re not racist. And he has the support of Donald Trump, who called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

But Robinson is more like someone else who dominates right-wing media: Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene rose to notoriety by following Parkland activist David Hogg around while berating him. It was as if she thought, “What’s the one unthinkable thing I could do to really make a name for myself?”

Robinson took a similar route by frequently attacking the Parkland students. “I remember when CHILDREN knew their place, and when they got out of place and got sassy, ADULTS would put them back into it,” he said.

In today’s piece, we’ll look at a number of other revealing, horrific statements and posts that have defined Robinson, making him a right-wing darling while alarming most normal people. The vitriol and danger he represents really only sinks in when you see the quotes and posts for yourself, so please consider this your warning that I will lift a pretty slimy rock to look underneath.

After reviewing his hateful utterances, I’ll discuss how this is more than just a nightmare for North Carolina, which has had its share of horrific politicians. Robinson’s elevation to the governor’s race is an opportunity for Democrats to change the national electoral math, as I’ll explain in greater detail below.

The receipts

I have read a lot of pieces that begin, as I did in this article, with a long litany of condemnations against Robinson. But without context, labeling him as a deplorable on all manner of levels doesn’t really give readers any sense of the man.

So I pulled some direct quotes and some screenshots from his Facebook page to help provide that context.

Holocaust denial and antisemitism:

Robinson once put the idea that six million Jews died in the Holocaust in quotes, as if it were in doubt: “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered,” he wrote. “There is also a REASON those same liberals DO NOT FILL the airwaves with programs about the Communist and the 100+ million PEOPLE they murdered throughout the 20th century.”

Robinson further played upon the Jewish-communist conspiracy trope. “It’s hard for me to understand how so many can remain blind to the fact that COMMUNISM, not Nazism was, and still is, the BIGGEST threat to American freedom,” he said, urging his followers to “wake up and see the REAL enemy.” He concluded, “After all, who do you think has been pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years?”

At one point Robinson claimed that the idea that Hitler disarmed six million Jews and marched them off to concentration camps was “foolishness” and “a bunch of hogwash.”

This next post is from his Facebook page in 2017, denying that Nazis are still around.

And in 2020, according to NC Newsline, Robinson believes the antisemitic Rothschild family conspiracy:

Robinson spoke with a fringe pastor, Sean Moon, who claimed that the modern incarnation of the four horsemen of the apocalypse includes China, the CIA, Islam and the Rothschild family of “international bankers that rule every single national or federal reserve-type style of central bank in every single country.”

Rather than object to the blatantly antisemitic conspiracy theory, Robinson grunted along in agreement. “That’s exactly right,” he said.

Anti-gay and anti-trans hate:

Robinson has claimed a First Amendment right to denigrate and dehumanize the LGBTQ+ community openly, calling its members “devil worshipping child molesters” and “sick, deranged sexual degenerates who promote this demonic behavior.”

In a speech he referred to transgenderism and homosexuality as “filth”:

He also warned that transgender people will be arrested or worse if he is governor, just for using the bathroom: “[I]f you’re a man on Friday night and all of the sudden on Saturday, you feel like a woman and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested — or whatever we got to do to you.”

Misogyny and anti-abortion extremism:

Of pregnant women and abortion, Robinson said, “It’s not your body anymore, it’s y’all’s body,” referring to the fetus and even the father. “And, yes, that includes the daddy,” he added. “She’s not your baby mama anymore. She ought to be your wife.”

He has insinuated Michelle Obama was a man and was gay:

He attacked Hillary Clinton as a “witch” who will continue to “murder the unborn.”

He compared Nancy Pelosi to murderous dictators.

In a recent speech, he said that society should be led by men and not women:

And he even blamed women for sexual harassment because they dressed sexy.

He also came for Taylor Swift, which honestly of all things probably will come back to haunt him most, knowing her fans.

Conspiracy peddling:

Like many other extremists amplified by right-wing media, Robinson also regularly names George Soros as a master manipulator. Soros is often the target of “globalist” minded conspiracy theorists. In response to the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria, for example, Robinson wrote,

Robinson also regularly rails against the “New World Order.” For those unfamiliar with this concept, Vice described it as follows:

The “New World Order” conspiracy—sometimes referred to as NWO (not to be confused with the pro-wrestling group)—has deep roots in American conspiracy theory culture. For decades, those three words have evoked all manner of dystopian horrors, including forced depopulation programs, a secretive ruling class of reptiles, and “elite globalists” on a satanic mission to bring about the “end times.”

Here are a few conspiracy gems from Robinson’s Facebook page:

(Narrator: Yes, that does sound paranoid and crazy.)

Speaking of which, Robinson even dabbled in Lunar Landing and 9/11 Trutherism:

Gun freakism

Robinson first made a name for himself by speaking on behalf of gun rights at a city council meeting, with his feelings about being blamed as a gun owner for the gun violence elsewhere going viral. His positions have only grown more strident over time. One quote in particular sums up how dangerous his rhetoric has become:

The appeal to MAGA primary voters could backfire in the general election

With baggage this heavy, it seems politically suicidal for MAGA to back such an extremist for the highest office in the state. Huff Post interviewed some experts in political science in North Carolina, and they had some insightful takes on Robinson’s candidacy, including why none of the above was disqualifying.

“It’s for the same reason Trump is under four indictments and is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency,” said Chris Cooper, a professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. “The inflammatory rhetoric is already baked into people’s opinions of him. We already knew he was engaged in these types of behaviors. So every news story about Robinson doesn’t really provide the voter with new information. So he can continue to weather the storm.”

“He is the Republican Party writ large,” said Steven Greene, a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “One of the major themes of Trump’s campaign could be considered a conspiracy theory, which is that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Republican primary voters have shown they are very, very willing to, shall we say, be comfortable with their political leaders holding conspiracy views.”

North Carolina already rejected an extremist for governor in 2020 by the name of Dan Forest. It turns out, the majority of the state’s electorate doesn’t want the kind of culture warrior that MAGA voters adore.

“Dan Forest’s problem, and the reason he lost, was because he was seen as too extreme of a social conservative. Mark Robinson is Forest on steroids,” remarked Greene, causing me to wonder if steroids is just a thing that pops to mind with this candidate. “We have seen ever since the elevation of Trump, Republican primary voters, again and again, time and time and time again, choosing the candidate who makes an awful general election candidate in a purple state.”

Tipping the electoral math

Democratic strategists now see an opening in North Carolina with Robinson as an easy target. Indeed, running an extremist in an important battleground state carries high risks for Republicans.

Trump won the state by three points in 2020, but it is shifting blue, and Robinson could motivate Democratic turnout to support Josh Stein, a Democrat who is the current Attorney General.

We already saw a version of this play out in 2022 in Pennsylvania, where an extremist candidate, Doug Mastriano, who was endorsed by Trump, ran against a moderate, Democratic, Jewish state Attorney General named Josh. (You can’t make this up.) In that race, Josh Shapiro cleaned Mastriano’s clock, and the presence of the MAGA extremist on the ticket may have helped John Fetterman defeat Trump’s other endorsed candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz.

The stakes are even higher in this race, however, because a big turnout of voters to prevent Robinson from becoming governor of North Carolina could conceivably tip the state blue in the presidential contest, too. If it goes to Biden, that pretty much ends the election for Trump because it means Biden could lose Michigan’s 15 electoral votes and still get to 270 with North Carolina’s 16 to replace them.

If the GOP should have learned anything from 2022, it is that extremists MAGA candidates backed by Donald Trump lose elections because the vast moderate middle of the country—particularly in the suburbs around big cities in battleground states—are weary of the nonsense. If that still holds true in 2024, as I expect it will, the GOP has just handed Democrats a gift by running Robinson at the top of the North Carolina ticket.