Martin Luther King Jr. was simply an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist,” and the Nineteen Sixties civil rights motion was “crap,” in accordance with a sequence of Facebook posts by Mark Robinson, the main Republican candidate to be North Carolina’s subsequent governor.
Robinson, who’s at present the state’s lieutenant governor, recurrently criticized King and the civil rights motion for years on Facebook ― particularly on MLK Day ― HuffPost discovered amid a evaluate of his posts. The Black politician additionally downplayed slavery, rejected the concept that he’s a part of the African American neighborhood, and attacked the late congressman and civil rights icon, John Lewis.
These posts are surfacing at a time when Robinson, who’s on observe to be the GOP nominee for governor in November, has been attempting to melt his rhetoric, and rejoice King and the civil rights motion.
Last month, former President Donald Trump hailed Robinson as “better than Dr. Martin Luther King” at a marketing campaign occasion, and Robinson responded by saying he “took it as a compliment” and “knowing what I know about him, and the history thereof, you know, those are big shoes to fill.”
His social media posts inform a distinct story.
In January 2018, Robinson mocked individuals who rejoice King, who he mentioned was only a subpar pastor. He didn’t point out King by title, however he was clearly speaking concerning the civil rights chief in his sequence of messages posted on MLK Day that 12 months.
“It is at once funny and sad that so many people will follow the lead of a bunch of atheists and worship an ersatz pastor as a deity,” he wrote in a single put up.
Robinson additionally used MLK Day to dismiss the concept that racism is actual.
“The ‘state of race relations’ exist chiefly within your own mind,” he mentioned.
“‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty we are free at last!’ Now what?” he mentioned in one other put up that day.
Those posts got here precisely one 12 months after Robinson wrote that he deliberate to work on MLK Day, a federal vacation, to indicate that he wasn’t “a leach” on society and permitting the federal government to chop him a break.
“Tomorrow I will do my ‘service to the community’ by going to work to continue to support myself and my family so I’m not a leach on said community,” Robinson posted on Jan. 16, 2017.
He additionally wrote on MLK Day that 12 months, “I don’t like Communist. No matter what ‘color’ they are.”
The North Carolina Republican later admitted in his 2022 e book, “We Are The Majority,” that he had been calling King a communist.
“December of 2007 was when I joined Facebook,” he wrote on pages 156-157. “Every political thought I had in my head, I put on there, up to and including my posting photos of Martin Luther King and calling him a communist.”
Officials with Robinson’s marketing campaign and in his official authorities workplace didn’t reply to requests for remark for this story.
Robinson hasn’t restricted his Facebook criticisms to King on MLK Day. That similar day, in 2017, he attacked Lewis, who practically misplaced his life combating for voting rights. On March 7, 1965, Alabama law enforcement officials gassed and brutally beat Lewis and lots of of different peaceable protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. That day, now generally known as “Bloody Sunday,” left Lewis with a fractured cranium.
“Hey John Lewis, Just because you got beat up by some Democrats in 1965 doesn’t mean you can’t get criticized by some Republicans in 2017,” Robinson wrote.
That similar day, Robinson posted that precise real-life slavery isn’t as unhealthy as slavery “of the mind,” which is Satan’s best software.
“Slavery of the mind is FAR worse than physical slavery,” the GOP gubernatorial hopeful wrote. “Slavery of the mind cannot be seen, cannot be made illegal, and is and always has been the greatest tool of Satan used against man….. and men against each other.”
The day earlier than, Robinson additionally posted that he didn’t “care what Lewis did in the 60s” as a result of the issue was what Lewis was doing that 12 months, in 2017.
(In truth, in 2017, Lewis was calling out Trump for not being “a legitimate president,” citing Russia’s interference within the 2016 elections to assist him win.)
But wait, there’s extra!
In May of 2017, Robinson posted on Facebook that the Nineteen Sixties civil rights motion was “crap” and a communist effort.
That similar month, in a very lengthy put up, he wrote that he doesn’t take into account himself a part of the “African-American’ community” as a result of this neighborhood murders its kids and “sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk.”
Going again additional on Facebook, Robinson wrote in 2015 that the civil rights motion was “never about giving rights” to folks, however about setting the stage to take folks’s rights away. The 12 months earlier than that, he wrote that racial integration was by no means about freedom however about destroying Black folks and “the bondage” of their minds.
Robinson is already recognized for his wildly offensive feedback about girls, LGBTQ folks and Muslims, along with fueling bonkers conspiracy theories. The motive he’s nonetheless the Republican front-runner for governor is as a result of he’s modeled himself after Trump ― a technique that some North Carolina political analysts predict will fail him within the basic election on this swing state.
His GOP challengers embody former Rep. Mark Walker, state treasurer Dale Folwell and trial lawyer Bill Graham, a relative newcomer to the race who has vowed to spend hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of his personal cash. Josh Stein, the state’s lawyer basic, is the main Democratic candidate. The present governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, is term-limited out this 12 months.
A Stein marketing campaign spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.
