Meet North Carolina’s GOP Governor Candidate: A Hitler-Quoting Extremist

A Hitler-quoting, gay-bashing, conspiracy-flouting antisemite is on track to cinch the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination in the battleground state of North Carolina.

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is up for election in the state’s primary election on Tuesday. He has so far pulled ahead by double-digit percentage points over his GOP opposition, Bill Graham, according to a February High Point University Survey Research Center poll.

That’s in spite of the fact that the Trump-endorsed candidate quoted Adolf Hitler in a 2014 Facebook post that normalizes the German dictator’s stance on racial pride.

“History who said it #1; ‘Pride in one’s own race—and that does not imply contempt for other races—is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves... They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong,” the post (which is still up) read.

Then, at a Moms for Liberty summit in July, Robinson fervently defended his choice to quote the genocidal leader of the Nazi Party, implying that doing so without context is not akin to endorsing his words or actions.

“Whether you’re talking about Adolf Hitler, whether you’re talking about Chairman Mao, whether you’re talking about Stalin, whether you’re talking about Pol Pot, whether you’re talking about Castro in Cuba, or whether you’re talking about a dozen other despots all around the globe; it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes,” Robinson said, adding, “It’s time for us to start teaching our children about the dirty, despicable, awful things that those Communist and socialist despots did in our history.”

Again, the Facebook post quoting Hitler is still up with none of this additional context.

Robinson has drawn immediate comparisons to Trump for his bombastic orations and loyal GOP following, and like Trump, he has a laundry list of controversies.

In other posts, Robinson has minimized the horrors of the Holocaust, claimed a “satanic marxist” had made the movie Black Panther to pull “shekels” out of Black audiences, likened women getting abortions to murderers, and derided gay people as “filth” and “maggots.”

He has also expressed archaic views about women’s role in society, telling a Charlotte-area church in 2022 that Christians are “called to be led by men.”

“God sent women out … when they had to do their thing, but when it was time to face down Goliath, [He] sent David. Not Davita, David,” Robinson said at the time.

And yet, Robinson’s gubernatorial win would turn the state’s executive branch—its last Democratic holdout—red, effectively locking Democrats out of a state they had once predicted would be their stronghold in the South.

Robinson’s likely opponent come November will be Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic favorite.