Say Hello To The Man Who May Be The Most Bigoted Politician On The Rise
Ladies and gentleman, I bring you, Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor and very possibly the next governor of the great state of North Carolina.
Robinson, who is of course a Republican, was introduced by trump as “one of the hottest politicians in our country” at the recent annual meeting of the far, far, far right, Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), which was held, where else but in Dallas, Texas. Robinson wrote in his memoir that he’s preparing for a run for governor in 2024.
Robinson opposes abortion, denies climate change, says that science and history shouldn’t be taught to students until they reach sixth grade and wants to abolish the State Board of Education and expand charter schools and school voucher programs, potentially supplanting the public school system.
Robinson, 54, an extra-large man who is North Carolina’s first African American lieutenant governor and the most powerful Republican in the state government, says in his soon-to-be published memoir, that science and social studies should not be taught in grades one through five.
“In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies. We don’t need to be teaching science. We surely don’t need to talk about equity and social justice,” writes Robinson, whose politics are not to be confused with the Black Lives Matter movement but are more in line with the beliefs of the great and strange neighbor to the south, the far right, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
And that is just the beginning of a story about the man who may be primed to take the title of most bigoted elected official in the nation.
Robinson was an invited guest speaker at the Aug. 4 kick off of the CPAC conference, which featured other luminaries like far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Fox News Anchor and trump bootlicker, Sean Hannity, and finally, the keynote for the gala, trump himself.
Robinson started his message by noting “the first thing is I’m going to give thanks to my lord and saviour Jesus Christ.” With that as his foundation, Robinson told the gathering, “America is still the greatest country on earth. I don’t care what these communists think, I don’t care what these socialists think. I don’t care what these long haired freaks say.”
“Socialist hordes are trying to drag us down into the pit of hell,” Robinson warned and then labeled as “garbage,” any discussion of critical race theory, transgendered people and referring to women as “birthing people.” Critical race theory is a subject taught mostly in colleges and universities that examines the ongoing, racist effects of enslavement on the American system. The subject has been seized by right wingers, particularly Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who led a move to prohibit teachers from broaching subjects like critical race theory, that might put whites in a less than favorable light.
“Birthing people” is a phrase that has been suggested to replace the name for mothers. Such a name change would apply to women who have taken surgical or psychological steps to deny their chromosomal female identity and to take on a male or binary or non-binary identity.
Speaking with the fire and brimstone of a preacher and the wisdom of a door knob, Robinson warned that “they are pushing this agenda” and apparently referring to mandated vaccinations against COVID-19, he said that “unless you get a shot you can’t keep your job, open your business or go to church.”
They, he said, are called “socialists, they’re called communists.”
Robinson called trump a “lion” and took a shot at President Biden, who he said, is “a president right now who can barely string together two sentences.”
“You see what happens when you replace a lion, well I would say a lamb but that’s an insult to the lamb,” Robinson said.
On his Facebook page, which has more than 100,000 followers, Robinson has posted that people “who support this mass delusion called transgenderism” of seeking “to glorify Satan.” He has compared homosexuality to cow manure, maggots, and flies and said the transgender movement is “demonic” and is “full of the spirit of the anti-Christ.”
Robinson called former President Obama “a worthless, anti-American atheist” and accused American Muslims of being “INVADERS” who “refuse to assimilate to our ways while demanding respect they have not earned.”
After the deadly, 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, in which 49 were killed and 53 were wounded at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Robinson wrote that “Homosexuality is STILL an abominable sin and I WILL NOT join in ‘celebrating gay pride.’”
In 2020, Robinson said the COVID-19 pandemic was a “globalist” conspiracy to defeat trump, and downplayed concerns about the pandemic and wrote that “The looming pandemic I’m most worried about is SOCIALISM.”
In June, 2021, six months after he assumed office, Robinson said in a speech at a Seagrove, N.C., church, that “transgenderism and homosexuality” are “filth” and that, “There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth.” In the same speech, Robinson called for an end to the separation of church and state in public schools.
For a bit of background, Robinson took office on Jan. 9, 2021, after defeating Democrat Yvonne Lewis Holley, who also is African American. He succeeded Republican Dan Forest, who ran for governor and lost to incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper. In the general election, Robinson won a close contest as he garnered 2,800,655 votes or 51.63 percent of the votes cast, while Holley had 2,623,458 votes or 48.37 percent. Robinson won the primary in a field of 10 candidates, collecting 240,843 votes, or 32.52 percent of the total votes cast.
The largest contributor to the Robinson campaign was Conservative Connections, which paid $840,157 of Robinson’s 2020 campaign costs. Conservative Connections is a political consulting group formed by Conrad Pogorzelski III, who Robinson later named as his chief of staff.
Pogozerlski also was the 2018 campaign director for the congressional campaign of Republican Mark Harris. Harris won the general election but an election panel refused to certify the results after investigating reports of ballot fraud involving McCrae Dowless, a Republican political operative employed by the Harris campaign. Dowless was later criminally charged in connection with the alleged fraud, but Harris was not. In February 2019, the bipartisan North Carolina Board of Elections dismissed the results of the election and called for a new election to be held. Harris was not a candidate in the new election.
Robinson was born in Greensboro, N.C., the scene of a critical event in early civil rights history when college students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (A&T), a historically black college, made Greensboro a center of protests and change. On Feb. 1, 1960, four black college students sat down at an “all-white” Woolworth’s lunch counter, and refused to leave after they were denied service. They had already purchased items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts. After being denied lunch service, they brought out the receipts, asking why their money was good everywhere else in the store but not at the lunch counter. Hundreds of supporters soon joined in the sit-in, which lasted several months. Similar protests quickly spread across the South, ultimately leading to the desegregation of lunch counters and other facilities at Woolworth’s and other chains.
Robinson is the antithesis of the Black Lives Matter movement that works to stop police from shooting unarmed African Americans. In one speech, Robinson mocked those who accuse police of undue violence.
“That’s not your fault that police beat you up, that police shouldn’t have shot you 15 times even though you did pull out a gun and point it at that police officer,” Robinson said. “The only thing I got to say about that is, you better be glad it wasn’t me. I would have shot you 30 times. I would have emptied every magazine I had on him.”
Robinson was the ninth of 10 children. His father was abusive, and he and his siblings lived in foster care for part of their childhood. Robinson graduated from Grimsley High School in Greensboro and served in the Army Reserve from 1985 to 1989. He worked at a furniture factory and attended North Carolina A&T State University.
Robinson and his wife, Yolanda, have filed for bankruptcy on three occasions, as he has been sued for payments, and had liens placed on him by the Internal Revenue Service as recently as 2012.
His introduction to politics came in April 2018, when he attended a meeting of the Greensboro City Council to hear a debate on whether to cancel a gun show in the wake of the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a killer brandishing a semi-automatic, assault rifle, killed 17 people and wounded 17 others.
Robinson spoke in favor of gun rights and a video of his speech went viral after it was shared on Facebook by then-Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., a strong opponent of gun control laws. Robinson was soon invited to speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention and his political career was off and running.
Robinson has been accused of being anti-Semitic, as when he claimed that the Marvel movie Black Panther was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxist” that was “only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets,” using a Yiddish slur for Black.
Robinson also appeared at an interview with Hyung Jin Moon, also known as Sean Moon, a pastor and son of the late Rev. Sung Myung Moon. In the interview, Sean Moon claimed that the Rothschild family was one of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” and promoted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of a cabal of Jewish “international bankers” who rule every country’s central bank. Robinson endorsed Moon’s claim as “exactly right.”
Sean Moon, who has claimed that he planned to become “king of the United States,” is co-founder of the Pennsylvania-based World Peace and Unification Sanctuary Church, also known as Rod of Iron Ministries. The church is a militant sect of the Unification movement, which was founded by Moon’s father. The Southern Poverty Law Center called Hyung Jin Moon an “anti-LGBT cult leader” in January 2018.
In 2018, Sean Moon’s church in Newfoundland, Pa., gained notoriety for holding a marriage vows renewal ceremony where participants were asked to bring AR-15 rifles, that Moon said were biblical “rods of iron.”