When it comes to Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, the question isn’t which of his bigoted remarks to mention, but when to stop.
Since he won the North Carolina primary earlier this month, the state’s one-term lieutenant governor has faced criticism for a long litany of comments in interviews, in sermons and on social media in which he quoted Hitler, referred to LGBTQ people as “filth,” depicted Muslims as terrorists and said certain Hollywood actresses were dressed as “whores.”
Faced with questions about whether he is antisemitic, homophobic, anti-Muslim and misogynistic, Robinson, who is Black, naturally responded by arguing that, actually, he is the real victim of bigotry.
Ironically, Robinson made this allegation on a podcast hosted by right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, who has called George Floyd “a scumbag,” said he wonders whether Black pilots are qualified and argued that Martin Luther King Jr. was “awful.”
When Kirk asked why Robinson believes he’s such a threat to the “MSNBC crowd,” the candidate cried racism. According to Robinson, liberals are only reminding people of his extremism because they fear a Black man holding power in the Republican Party might appeal to disaffected Black voters in the Democratic Party.
He said:
In my case, what they really see is they see a candidate that is able to reach out to those folks, bring common sense solutions to the problems they face, and then they see someone who looks like them and ultimately what happens there is we get into office and there’s success, and all of a sudden voting dynamics in North Carolina are changing for decades. And quite possibly, it starts across the nation. They’re very afraid of that. They don’t want that to happen. They cannot have a conservative Black man at the helm in North Carolina or in any state. Because it’s gonna show the great results of what president Trump did at the national level.
(Robinson has conceded at times that he wrote posts that were “poorly worded” but claims that they were not antisemitic.)
As for Robinson’s supposed strategy, there’s no evidence he has any sort of broad appeal among Black voters. In his 2020 lieutenant governor’s race, his opponent won, by a large margin, all of the majority-Black counties in the state. Robinson is, however, the type of candidate Republicans like to prop up to give voters the impression that far-right ideals have valence among Black folks — Black men in particular.
Robinson has denounced Martin Luther King Jr. as a “communist.” He’s called Michelle Obama a man and said other extremely offensive things about her. And he’s bemoaned the Civil Rights Movement because, he says, “so many freedoms were lost” during that period. So it seems highly unlikely he’ll win over a significant share of Black voters in North Carolina. Far from “Martin Luther King on steroids,” as Donald Trump has called him, he’s more like the self-hating Uncle Ruckus, of “The Boondocks” fame.
But the fact that he’s shrouding himself in victimhood, portraying himself as some sort of Black icon under attack from leftists, suggests he recognizes that the remarks may be hurting him in the general election. And he’s looking for some way — any way — to get past them.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.