Bluesky

At a rally in Greensboro on March 2, Donald Trump endorsed Mark Robinson’s bid to become governor of  North Carolina by describing the candidate as “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Trump added, “I told that to Mark. I said, ‘I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two.’” For Robinson, this was surely bittersweet praise. Robinson was already on track to win the Republican gubernatorial nomination, and Trump’s extravagant paean would seal the deal. Since Robinson had very much styled himself as a maverick MAGA candidate, being celebrated by Trump was surely gratifying.

What might have stuck in Robison’s craw, though, was the comparison with MLK. Although he’s Black, Robinson is no fan of the martyred civil rights leader. In a riveting report published by CNN on Thursday, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck document that on private pornography message boards Robinson often made shocking statements expressing sympathy for racism and white supremacy. In 2011, when President Barack Obama participated in the dedication of a memorial to King, Robinson posted, “Get that f*cking commie bastard off the National Mall!” Robinson also wrote, “I’m not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!”

These comments were made under a pseudonym and Robinson denies making them, claiming that the CNN report is a fabrication. But the digital fingerprints that CNN presented as evidence for Robinson’s authorship are compelling.

The King remarks are only a small fraction of what CNN uncovered. In 2010, Robinson also described himself as a “black Nazi” and claimed, “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few.” Two years later, he wrote, “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Washington right now!”

In the lesser realm of hypocrisy, Robinson expressed enjoyment of pornography starring trans women—a preference newsworthy only because, in his current capacity as lieutenant governor of North Carolina, he has been virulently anti-trans. Robinson also recalled being a teenage Peeping Tom who spied on teenage girls taking showers at a public gym.

Rumors of the CNN report threw Robinson’s campaign into a crisis, with Republicans pressuring him to drop out before midnight Thursday—the deadline to remove him from the ballot. But now Republicans are stuck with him. North Carolina is a swing state, so Robinson’s extremism could drag down votes in the presidential contest as well as races downballot. It is, one can plausibly argue, a liability for a political party to have a state standard-bearer who is an avowed Nazi—even in the age of Donald Trump.

Yet it’s hard to feel sorry for Republicans. Mark Robinson might be a political monster, but he is a monster that was specifically selected, groomed, and elevated by the Republican Party of North Carolina—a process that was then repeated by the national party.

Any political party can have its share of embarrassing, scandal-prone, and corrupt politicians. Certainly the Democrats—the party of John Edwards, Rod Blagojevich, and Robert Menendez—hold no high moral ground. But what is distinct about Robinson is that all his major faults were known to the party even as they elevated him. The CNN report has added many juicy new details that decorate the picture—but they don’t fundamentally change Robinson’s profile. As Christina Reynolds, vice president of communications at the feminist lobbying group Emily’s List, noted, “Let’s be clear, what came out today is terrible, but it fits with everything we’ve always known about Mark Robinson. They knew who he was and they supported him.”

Mark Robison would be fully justified in quoting the famous lyrics from “The Snake” (composed by Oscar Brown) that Trump often cites: “You knew damn well I was a snake before you brought me in.”

Consider what was already known about Robinson long before the CNN report. In a 2014 Facebook post, Robinson approvingly quoted Adolf Hitler. In 2017, Robinson wrote: “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.” The following year, another Facebook post read:

I have been biting my tongue about this silly Black Panther comic book movie, but I can’t any longer. It is absolutely AMAZING to me that people who know so little about their true history and REFUSE to acknowledge the pure sorry state of their current condition can get so excited about a fictional “hero” created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?

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In 2021, Robinson referred to LGBTQ people as “filth.” None of this was a secret as Robinson rose through the political ranks.

As David A. Graham reported in an extensive profile in The Atlantic, Robinson’s political trajectory has been unusual. For most of his life Robinson wasn’t involved with politics. He lived a hardscrabble, precarious working-class life that is exceptionally rare in American politics. Then, as Graham relates:

In April 2018, following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the Greensboro City Council considered canceling a local gun show. Robinson, then employed unloading trucks and moving finished furniture, delivered a stem-winder in defense of gun rights at the council’s meeting…

Representative Mark Walker, a North Carolina Republican, shared the speech on Facebook, and it went viral. Three days later, Robinson was on Fox News talking about gun rights. Soon, Republicans were pushing Robinson to use his newfound fame to run for office in 2020.

He was an unusual recruit: He’s Black in a very white party. He is an unapologetic culture warrior in a diversifying and purple state. He is also a blue-collar worker in a country (and party) where most candidates and officials are well-to-do. But grassroots conservatives and party officials urged him to stand for lieutenant governor. His viral moment showed his politics and his ability to get attention.

As Graham’s account makes clear, Robinson is very much a product of the Trump era. His ability to go viral on social media is an essential talent, one shared by Trump and his many imitators such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake. As a working-class Black man, Robinson offers a chance for the GOP to rebrand its image as party of wealthy white people. To be sure, there’s little evidence that Robinson’s extremist politics have any traction with Black voters, even socially conservative ones. Rather, he provides the white base of the GOP a shield from accusations of racism. As such, his Black conservatism remains distinct from the more authentic tradition of appeals by Black traditionalists to Black audiences—a tradition that runs from Marcus Garvey to the Nation of Islam. These Black traditionalists were organically rooted in the lived experience of communal self-reliance, mutual aid, and amply justified distrust of white liberal paternalism. Far from being a Black traditionalist in this mold, Robinson is merely someone with far-right politics who happens to be Black, or to use his own words, a “black Nazi.”

Mark Robinson went from being a political unknown to a Republican gubernatorial candidate in six years because he was exactly what the GOP wanted: a Black candidate with MAGA opinions. If Robinson is now an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party, they did it to themselves. Dr. Frankenstein was also known to shed tears when confronted by his creation—and he also deserved no pity.