Far Right Black GOP Candidate For North Carolina Governor Dumps On MLK
Today is the annual observance of the birth of the venerated, martyred civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but it is no cause for celebration for Mark Robinson, the far right, African American lieutenant governor of North Carolina.
King’s civil rights legacy is well documented in North Carolina, the one-time notoriously racist state that was a key civil rights battlefield. King however, does not deserve respect, according to Robinson, 55, elected lieutenant governor in 2020, and the current Republican candidate for the governor of North Carolina. Robinson said the media had it all wrong, that King was a communist and an inferior minister. Robinson joined a long list of Republicans who have perverted and weaponized King’s memory.
In addition to debasing the memory of King, Robinson has said that he is not a member of the African American community, he has downplayed enslavement, attacked the late congressman and civil rights icon, John Lewis, is an enemy of the LGBTQ community, has denied the Holocaust, has made inflammatory anti-Semitic statements and rejects climate change. Robinson also has promoted many bizarre conspiracy theories on issues ranging from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Robinson has been a consistent critic of King and the civil rights movement. He has posted on his Facebook page that King was an “ersatz pastor,” that the 1960s civil rights movement was “crap” and that he would work on MLK Day because he’s “not a leach,” according to a story in HuffPost.
Former president trump has endorsed Robinson, calling him “better than Dr. Martin Luther King.” Despite his attacks on King, Robinson said he took trump’s comments “as a compliment” and said, “knowing what I know about him, and the history thereof, you know, those are big shoes to fill.’ Trump infamously violated King’s precepts when he refused to criticize white supremacists and neo-Nazis who marched at a rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
Robinson has posted on social media that “the ‘state of race relations’ exists chiefly within your own mind,” and that it is “at once funny and sad that so many people will follow the lead of a bunch of atheists and worship an ersatz pastor as a deity.”
“I don’t like Communist. No matter what ‘color’ they are,” Robinson posted.
In his 2022 book, “We Are the Majority,” Robinson wrote that he joined Facebook in 2017, when he posted, “Every political thought I had in my head, I put on there, up to and including my posting photos of Martin Luther King and calling him a communist.”
At the same time, Robinson attacked Lewis, who nearly lost his life fighting for voting rights. On March 7, 1965, Alabama police gassed and brutally beat Lewis and hundreds of other peaceful protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. That day, now known as “Bloody Sunday,” left Lewis with a fractured skull.
“Hey John Lewis, just because you got beat up by some Democrats in 1965 doesn’t mean you can’t get criticized by some Republicans in 2017,” Robinson posted.
Robinson went on to post that the enslavement of millions of African Americans wasn’t as bad as slavery “of the mind,” which is Satan’s greatest tool.
“Slavery of the mind is FAR worse than physical slavery,” Robinson posted. “Slavery of the mind cannot be seen, cannot be made illegal, and is and always has been the greatest tool of Satan used against man….. and men against each other.”
In May of 2017, Robinson posted that the civil rights movement was “crap” and a “Communist Rise Movement.” He wrote that the movement was “never about giving rights” to people, but about setting the stage to take people’s rights away. He wrote that racial integration was never about freedom but about destroying Black people and creating “the bondage” of their minds.
Around the same time, Robinson posted that he doesn’t consider himself part of the “African-American community” because the community murders its children and “sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk.”
In a Dec. 13 address at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, trump spoke highly of Robinson.
“I said, ‘You know what? I swear I think you’re better than Dr. Martin Luther King,’ And I wasn’t sure if he was happy about that. Dr. Martin Luther King was great. And I think he didn’t like that comparison but he accepted it. But [Robinson] gives some speeches that were so incredible,” trump said.
“He’s going to go down as one of the great leaders in our country — one of the greatest leaders,” Trump said of Robinson. “He’s outstanding in presentation, but he’s probably even more outstanding in heart and the understanding of people and what you need and getting things done.”
Robinson has been a constant conspiracist. He said that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the 1969 moon landing was fake and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an “inside job.” He’s “SERIOUSLY skeptical” of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. He falsely claimed that David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was a paid actor.
Robinson has posted that news coverage of police shootings is part of a media conspiracy “designed to push US towards their new world order.” In October 2018, when authorities intercepted pipe bombs intended for President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CNN, Robinson posted that they had done it to themselves.
“If you can’t beat ’em, bomb yourself,” he wrote.
In March 2023, Robinson’s posts questioned the figure of 6 million Jews perishing in the Holocaust.
“This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash,” he posted, and “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.”
Robinson has claimed that the music industry is run by Satan and the Illuminati. He has called Beyoncé’s music “satanic” and Jay-Z’s as “demonic” and sent by Satan to turn people away from Jesus. He also suggested that the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria was orchestrated by billionaire Democratic philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic attacks by Republicans.
On his Facebook page, which has more than 100,000 followers, Robinson called former President Obama “a worthless, anti-American atheist” and posted “birther” memes that claimed that Obama was not born in the U.S. and was not qualified to be president; he accused American Muslims of being “INVADERS” who “refuse to assimilate to our ways while demanding respect they have not earned”; and he called Michelle Obama a man.
After the 2016 Pulse gay nightclub shooting, Robinson wrote that “Homosexuality is STILL an abominable sin and I WILL NOT join in ‘celebrating gay pride.’” In a June 2021 speech at a Seagrove, N.C. church, Robinson disparaged “transgenderism and homosexuality” as “filth” and said, “There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes I called it filth. And if you don’t like that I called it filth, come see me and I’ll explain it to you.”
Robinson said in March during a church service outside Charlotte that God created him specifically to fight against the push for LGBTQ rights and visibility, which he says is turning America into a “hellhole.” Robinson’s comments about God were in line with trump who recently shared a Messianic video about God sending him to save the world.
Robinson claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic was a “globalist” conspiracy to defeat trump. He also accused people “who support this mass delusion called transgenderism” of seeking “to glorify Satan.”
Robinson and his wife, Yolanda Hill, were married in 1990. In a 2012 social media post, Robinson acknowledged that in 1989, he paid for a woman that he impregnated to get an abortion. In 2022, Robinson said the woman in question was his eventual wife, Yolanda.
Robinson has filed for bankruptcies in 1998, 1999 and 2003. He has been sued several times for nonpayment of debts. In 2012, Robinson’s landlord sued him for failure to pay around $2,000 in rent; the landlord filed for summary eviction.
According to court records, Robinson did not pay seven years of federal income tax and had tax liens placed on him by the Internal Revenue Service as recently as 2012. Robinson said in 2020 that his issues with the IRS had been resolved.
Robinson was born in North Carolina, the ninth of 10 children. He claimed that his father was abusive and alcoholic, and that he and his family were victims of domestic violence. Robinson and his siblings lived in foster care for part of their childhood. He graduated high school, served in the Army Reserve and attended North Carolina A&T State University.
His first foray into politics came in 2018 when he attended a meeting of the Greensboro City Council, which was debating whether to cancel a gun show in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Robinson spoke in favor of gun rights, a video of his speech went viral and he soon quit college to focus on public speaking.
Robinson’s 2020 campaign finance reports came under investigation for including incomplete information on campaign contributors. Campaign finance watchdog Bob Hall identified several questionable expenditures in Robinson’s campaign reports, including $186 for medical bills and for $2,840 for “campaign clothes and accessories” most of it spent at a sporting goods shop. Robinson’s reports also showed that Robinson’s wife spent $4,500 for “campaign clothing” but gave no details. Robinson’s campaign blamed “clerical errors” while Hall’s complaint remains pending.
Robinson is the latest in a line of Republicans to distort King’s messages to justify right wing policies.
Trump chose Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2021 to release the 1776 Commission, a report commissioned by trump to support what he called “patriotic education.” Trump said the manifesto would counter the “toxic propaganda” of “critical race theory” that trump said is “a Marxist doctrine that rejects the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.” Trump said critical race theory was “child abuse in the truest sense of those words.” Critical race theory claims that racial bias is inherent in many parts of western society, especially in legal and social institutions, because they were primarily designed for and implemented by white people.
The 1776 Commission report has been roundly criticized for its errors and partisan slants. Biden terminated the commission on his first day in office.
Other Republicans soon jumped on the bandwagon to reject teaching critical race theory in school, often in the name of King. In 2021, then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said “Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King Jr. taught us,” and Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican candidate for president, invoked King when he introduced legislation to reenforce his earlier prohibition of critical race theory education in public schools.
Vivek Ramaswamy, also a Republican presidential hopeful, used King’s memory to support his call to bar critical race theory instruction and to cancel efforts toward diversity, equity and inclusion.
“What bothers the heck out of me is right when we’re close to that promised land … [we] then obsess about systemic racism and white guilt,” Ramaswamy said this month.
DeSantis also asserted that King would have supported book bans, like those imposed in Florida because DeSantis’ policies prohibited books that infer white guilt about racism.
“He said he didn’t want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character,” DeSantis said.
Another presidential contender, Nikki Haley, claimed she was inspired by King but was hesitant to acknowledge that enslavement was the main cause of the Civil War.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House Majority Leader, voted in 1994 and 2004 against establishing the MLK holiday and now calls King a national hero. Scalise had voted in 2015 against a Louisiana state resolution apologizing for slavery.
Last February, State Rep. Brandei Schaefbauer, R-S.D., misquoted King to justify her vote against healthcare rights for trans teens.
Robinson represents a state that was the site of a civil rights protest in 1960 that ignited the movement. It occurred in Greensboro when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter. The students refused to leave after being denied service and the sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. Their actions forced Woolworth’s and other establishments to change their segregationist policies.
King visited Durham on Feb. 16, 1960, as the sit-in movement spread Greensboro. When King visited, the Woolworth lunch counter was still closed. King addressed a crowd of 1,200 people at the White Rock Baptist Church, advocating for nonviolent protests and urging attendees to continue pursuing civil rights.
In the height of the civil rights movement, King went to Durham in November 1964 to speak at the Southern Political Science Association at the Jack Tar Hotel. King also spoke at Duke University in Page Auditorium and called segregation a “cancer of the body politic that must be cured.”
King was set to visit Durham on April 4, 1968, to encourage voter registration. But at the time, he was supporting a sanitation strike in Memphis, Tenn., which turned violent and forced King to cancel his Durham trip. He was assassinated on the same day.