Mark Robinson, the MAGA nominee for governor in North Carolina, may not have the national name recognition of convicted felon Donald Trump or mass deportation enthusiast Marco Rubio, but he is one of the most extreme Republican candidates of 2024 (and that’s saying something these days.)
During a hate-laden speech on June 30 (yes, this past June 30, when he was already the GOP nominee for governor), Robinson vociferously endorsed deadly political violence against people he perceives to be his enemies, claiming that “we now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent” and that “some folks need killing.” The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reports that Robinson made the call for extrajudicial killing from a small-town church, no less.
“Robinson’s call for the ‘killing’ of ‘some folks’ came during an extended diatribe in which he attacked an extraordinary assortment of enemies,” he wrote. “These ranged from ‘people who have evil intent’ to “wicked people” to those doing things like ‘torturing and murdering and raping’ to socialists and Communists. He also invoked those supposedly undermining America’s founding ideals and leftists allegedly persecuting conservatives by canceling them and doxxing them online.”
Robinson’s campaign subsequently claimed his remarks were referring to enemies of the U.S. during World War II before refusing to say anything at all. The pastor of the church where he spoke also came to his defense, claiming that Robinson “certainly did not imply the taking of any innocent lives.” So what’s their excuse for Robinson mocking the brutal, attempted assassination of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022?
WHO IS MARK ROBINSON?
Robinson, the current lieutenant governor of North Carolina, is a conspiracy theorist and election denier with “a long record of shockingly offensive statements targeting Jews, Muslims, women, LGBTQ people, and the Civil Rights Movement,” journalist Stephen Wolf wrote in March. In Facebook posts unearthed by Huff Post, Robinson denigrated Martin Luther King Jr., “downplayed slavery, rejected the idea that he’s part of the African American community, and attacked the late congressman and civil rights icon, John Lewis.”
He’s also launched despicable attacks against immigrants and their families, referring to the nearly 25,000 DACA recipients who call North Carolina their home as “dumb ass Communist Americans,” Immigration Hub said. “From claims that all immigrants are criminals to demands for inhumane and draconian border security measures, Robinson, if elected, could threaten North Carolina’s present and future families and workforce.”
Like other top Republicans, Robinson has also echoed the deadly rhetoric of racist mass murderers, claiming that we’re seeing an “invasion at our border.” As America’s Voice Senior Research Director Zachary Mueller previously noted, white nationalist “invasion” fiction “is not new but was once confined to the fringe and dark corners of the internet. And though it is directly linked to the white nationalist terror attacks in El Paso, Pittsburgh, Poway, and Buffalo, elected Republicans from leadership on down have come to fully embrace this racist fiction as part of their political attacks around immigration and the border.”
This rhetoric is so toxic that even hate groups associated with late white nationalist John Tanton are now attempting to distance themselves from the language now embraced by GOP candidates like Robinson.
Robinson has further peddled the pernicious lie that immigrants are to blame for the fentanyl crisis when the facts are clear that it’s largely U.S. citizens who are responsible for tracking the deadly drug into the United States. Falsely asserting the urgent fentanyl crisis, which has become a leading cause of death for young Americans, is an immigration issue that can be principally solved with harsh crackdowns at the border is disinformation that pollutes the pressing need for solutions.
ROBINSON PART OF PATTERN OF GOP COURTING VIOLENCE
Robinson’s remarks continue a deeply disturbing pattern of Republicans animating an approving atmosphere for hard-right violence that puts an increasingly large target on the backs of Americans because of the color of their skin or the accent in which they speak.
“Trump wanted to shoot racial justice protesters in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in 2020,” MSNBC’s Sarah Posner reports, and the following year incited the deadly insurrection that led to the deaths of numerous law enforcement officers and the former president’s indictment on felony charges. Before ascending to the presidency in 2016, Trump encouraged his supporters to physically assault protesters at his rallies. “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them,” he said in 2016. “I’ll pay the legal fees.” Trump’s rhetoric inspired so many people to carry out violence in his name, that AV created a map to track these incidents.
In a more recent GOP call for violence, Rep. Mike Collins disgustingly suggested that a man alleged to have been involved in a Times Square attack on police officers be thrown from a helicopter, employing a slogan popular with white supremacists. But the man villainized by Collins was soon cleared of any criminal wrongdoing after prosecutors found he had nothing to do with the incident, the Associated Press reported. Within the last several months, Proud Boys, white nationalists, members of the white supremacist prison gang, armed hard-right conspiracy theorists, and hard-right bigots have rallied around rhetoric from prominent Republicans like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Back in North Carolina, the campaign of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Stein released a statement saying the state “cannot have a Governor who calls for extrajudicial killings,” The Asheville Citizen Times reported. C.A.R.E, a coalition of groups in North Carolina, has also been leading in countering Robinson’s rhetoric. “We are a coalition of organizations that represent average North Carolinians from the mountains to the sea, in small towns and rural areas, and across Black, Brown, Indigenous, and white communities,” the coalition’s site said. “We are here to say: Mark Robinson is wrong for North Carolina.”
RELATED: Fresh Evidence: GOP Use of Lies and Conspiracies Threatens Democracy and to Provoke Violence
Violence and disinformation, latent threats in the 2024 electoral process
