Mark Robinson made a choice to demonize others. He didn’t have to. | Opinion

It should be lost on no one that Mark Robinson, a Black man with a history of antisemitic sentiments, is facing Josh Stein, a man who could become North Carolina’s first Jewish governor.

It should be noted that the match-up is happening during a year in which antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise. We are amid the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terror attack during which Hamas slaughtered an estimated 1,500 Israelis. That led to an ungodly response by an Israeli military that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and created a humanitarian crisis that has left a trail of starving, dying and dead babies.

Robinson and his Republican enablers will want us to forget who he really is. We mustn’t forget.

Maybe they’ll try to convince us Robinson’s antisemitism was a product of his youth, or because he wasn’t always a seasoned politician, or because Jews and Christians share a religious tradition he can’t be an antisemite.

Robinson has essentially already done the latter, following in the footsteps of extreme evangelical pastor John Hagee. Hagee once proclaimed God sent Hitler “to help Jews reach the promised land” by unleashing one of the world’s great evils, the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered.

Despite that, Hagee’s defenders claim he isn’t antisemitic. He’s the head of Christians United for Israel, after all. Robinson’s defenders claim all is well with Robinson’s antisemitism because he traveled to Israel and spoke with Jewish leaders.

Never mind that in a 2014 Facebook post, Robinson included Hitler’s “pride in one’s own race” quote. He claimed he was just doing what “every history book in America” does because “they all quote him.”

This is how the Jewish Insider in a 2021 article titled “North Carolina’s lieutenant governor has Jewish community on high alert” summarized some of Robinson’s past statements:

“In strongly worded Facebook posts, he decried a ‘globalist’ conspiracy to ‘destroy’ former President Donald Trump and took aim at Black Panther, the Marvel film whose titular protagonist, as Robinson put it, was ‘created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by (a) satanic marxist.’ He went on to allege, using a Yiddish slur, that the movie ‘was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.’”

Robinson has also said acceptance of gay people will lead to the acceptance of pedophilia. He compared LGBTQ people to “maggots” during a sermon, demeaned Muslims, and said trans people should be arrested or use the bathroom outdoors. He also helped spread the bigoted birtherism conspiracy theory about Barack Obama while intimating Michelle Obama was a man.

He calls abortion murder despite that being a choice he and his wife made before having two children. He has said that decision was wrong. But he has not said that “murder” disqualified him from holding office. It certainly didn’t convince him to the grace to others he now wants others to extend to him.

Neither did his tough upbringing. He battled poverty and an alcoholic father. He wants that story to make him more relatable to North Carolinians despite all the ways he demeaned and spit on the most vulnerable among us, often without apology.

I’m a Black man who grew up in tough conditions in the Deep South during the period Robinson did. He made a choice to be antisemitic and ugly in a bevy of other ways. He didn’t have to.

My mama always told me to be on the lookout for those who throw a rock and hide their hand. Robinson has thrown plenty of rocks at people who dare live a life different than the one he wants to dictate to the rest of us. Instead of standing on those long-held convictions, he’s attempting to hide his hand.

The North Carolina Republican Party chose him as their standard bearer in spite or maybe because of that record. The rest of North Carolina must not follow their lead. We must not let people forget who this man has long been, no matter how often we have to remind them.

Issac Bailey is a Carolinas opinion writer for McClatchy.