Mark Robinson: Who Is The Conspiracy-Loving Republican North Carolina Governor Nominee?
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The presidential election is taking up a lot of 2024's oxygen, and for good reason, and more potential horrors await us in November. In March, Republican voters in North Carolina chose Mark Robinson as their nominee for governor. Robinson, a former furniture-factory worker who currently serves as North Carolina’s lieutenant governor under Roy Cooper, shot to “fame” shortly after the Parkland High School shooting in 2018, when he showed up to a Greensboro, NC, city council meeting about canceling a gun show and gave an impassioned speech defending gun rights. The video went viral, and helped quickly propel him into politics.
But Robinson, who will face off against Democrat Josh Stein in November, isn’t just an ardent lover of the Second Amendment. He’s also a Donald Trump-like “political firebrand” — as the New York Times euphemistically described him — who traffics in conspiracy theories, quoted Hitler, wants to restrict abortion access, has said horrific things about LGBTQ+ people, and thinks Beyonce’s music is “satanic,” just to note a few points of madness. And he could win!
Let’s take a look at his record.
Women’s and Reproductive Rights
Robinson’s record on women’s and reproductive rights is, to put it mildly, not good. When he ran for lieutenant governor in 2020, he advocated for a complete ban on abortion with no exceptions. He has called abortion “murder” and “a moral evil, like slavery,” and has also claimed that when a woman becomes pregnant, “It’s not [her] body anymore.” (Robinson, it must be said, paid for his now wife to have an abortion in 1989, which he now claims was a mistake.)
With antiabortion candidates flailing after the overturn of Roe, Robinson kept relatively quiet about his stance on abortion for much of the gubernatorial primary campaign. But as recently as February, he championed a six-week abortion ban in North Carolina.
Also worth noting: In 2020, while attending an event hosted by a group of Republican women in North Carolina during his run for lieutenant governor, Robinson was caught on camera saying he would “absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn't vote,” although local NBC affiliate WCNC says those comments were taken considerably out of context.
Robinson has, however, made other misogynistic comments. In 2022, for instance, at a Charlotte- area church, he insisted that Christians are “called to be led by men.” He has also criticized women in Hollywood for how they dress, berated women athletes, called Taylor Swift “Trailer Shift,” and referred to Michelle Obama as a man.
LBGTQ+ Issues
Robinson has a long history of making incendiary statements about LGBTQ+ people, particularly targeting the trans community. The Advocate has a lengthy list of Robinson’s worst quotes, which you should peruse in full, but I’ll list some here: He once claimed that the government should arrest trans women for using women’s bathrooms and argued that transgender people should defecate outside instead of using public restrooms; he also called LGBTQ+ people “filth,” compared them to “maggots,” and likened homosexuality to pedophilia; and after the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016 that left 49 people dead, Robinson wrote in a Facebook post that “homosexuality is STILL an abominable sin” and called the Pride flag “sacrilegious.”
Robinson has claimed that it is his divine duty to fight LGBTQ+ issues, so North Carolinians can expect more of this from him if he is indeed elected governor.
Religion
Robinson considers himself a devout Christian, does not believe in the separation of church and state, and wants to introduce prayer in public schools. He has also made many inflammatory remarks about other religions, specifically Islam and Judaism. According to HuffPost, Robinson spent years posting Islamophobic comments on his Facebook page, claiming that Muslims are violent and accusing them of being terrorists.
Robinson has also made many antisemitic remarks, including — to name a few — calling the Holocaust “hogwash,” quoting Hitler on Facebook, and once endorsing a podcast host’s view that a Jewish banking family was one the horseman of the apocalypse. (He has also declared his staunch support for Israel.)
Civil Rights
Trump has called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids,” which would be true if steroid use fundamentally destroyed a person’s values. Robinson has criticized the Civil Rights Movement, claiming that it was a communist plot to “subvert capitalism” and that “so many freedoms were lost” during the movement. (He also called Martin Luther King Jr. a communist and criticized the late US representative and Civil Rights icon John Lewis.) Robinson once made a post on Facebook claiming that “slavery of the mind is FAR worse than physical slavery,” and made another post alleging that racial integration was about “the destruction of [Black] families, the bondage of your minds, and the theft of your talents.”
Robinson has had especially vicious words for Black women. He called Frederica Wilson, a Black US representative from Florida, “lying, liberal, bottom-feeding, pond scum,” has accused Michelle Obama of speaking “ghetto” and “wookie,” and once claimed that Halle Berry, Mariah Carey, and Issa Rae were “dressing in see thru, ultra tight, breast bearing whore dresses to protest sexual harassment” at the Golden Globes.
Conspiracy Theories
As HuffPost has reported, Robinson loves conspiracy theories, and he’s left the receipts on social media. He once posted on Facebook: “I don't believe the Moon Landing was faked and I don't believe 9/11 was an ‘inside job’ but if I found both were true…I wouldn't be surprised.” He also once posted that he was “SERIOUSLY skeptical of EVERYTHING I see and have seen on television. From the murder of JFK to 9/11 to Las Vegas. EVERYTHING.” He reportedly thinks climate change is fake; claimed that Black Panther was a “fictional ‘hero’ created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist [sic]” to steal money from Black people; and he accused philanthropist George Soros of carrying out the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls.
And Robinson is reportedly a fan of the New World Order conspiracy, which, as Vice reported in 2022, is a decades-long conspiracy theory that posits a “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.’” Parts of that “New World Order,” according to Robinson, are reality television programs like Chopped and American Idol, Bill Clinton, progressives, and, again, George Soros.
And What Was That Thing About Beyoncé?
One of Robinson’s preferred conspiracy theories is that the music industry is run by both Satan and the Illuminati, with Beyoncé apparently playing a key role. He has likened her music to “Satanic chants,” and has accused her of being a “skank” who teaches “young women how to be hyper-sexual whores.” He also says Jay-Z is a “demonic stooge of Satan.” I'm guessing Robinson probably didn’t dig Cowboy Carter….
So there you have it — Mark Robinson, the GOP’s pick for North Carolina governor.
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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