Martin Luther King Jr. was simply an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist,” and the Nineteen Sixties civil rights motion was “crap,” in keeping with a sequence of Fb posts by Mark Robinson, the main Republican candidate to be North Carolina’s subsequent governor.
Robinson, who’s at the moment the state’s lieutenant governor, recurrently criticized King and the civil rights motion for years on Fb ― 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 monitor to be the GOP nominee for governor in November, has been making an attempt to melt his rhetoric, and have fun King and the civil rights motion.
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Final month, former President Donald Trump hailed Robinson as “higher than Dr. Martin Luther King” at a marketing campaign occasion, and Robinson responded by saying he “took it as a praise” and “understanding what I find out about him, and the historical past thereof, you understand, these are massive footwear to fill.”
His social media posts inform a special story.
In January 2018, Robinson mocked individuals who have fun King, who he stated was only a subpar pastor. He didn’t point out King by identify, however he was clearly speaking in regards to the civil rights chief in his sequence of messages posted on MLK Day that 12 months.
“It’s directly humorous and unhappy that so many individuals will comply with 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 mainly inside your individual thoughts,” he stated.
“‘Free ultimately! Free ultimately! Thank God almighty we’re free ultimately!’ Now what?” he stated in one other put up that day.
These 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’ll do my ‘service to the neighborhood’ by going to work to proceed to assist myself and my household so I’m not a leach on stated neighborhood,” Robinson posted on Jan. 16, 2017.
He additionally wrote on MLK Day that 12 months, “I don’t like Communist. It doesn’t matter what ‘colour’ they’re.”
The North Carolina Republican later admitted in his 2022 ebook, “We Are The Majority,” that he had been calling King a communist.
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“December of 2007 was once I joined Fb,” he wrote on pages 156-157. “Each political thought I had in my head, I placed on there, as much as and together with my posting photographs of Martin Luther King and calling him a communist.”
Officers 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 Fb criticisms to King on MLK Day. That very same day, in 2017, he attacked Lewis, who almost misplaced his life preventing for voting rights. On March 7, 1965, Alabama cops gassed and brutally beat Lewis and a whole bunch of different peaceable protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. That day, now referred to as “Bloody Sunday,” left Lewis with a fractured cranium.
“Hey John Lewis, Simply since you obtained beat up by some Democrats in 1965 doesn’t imply you may’t get criticized by some Republicans in 2017,” Robinson wrote.
Mark Robinson’s Fb web page
That very same day, Robinson posted that precise real-life slavery isn’t as dangerous as slavery “of the thoughts,” which is Devil’s biggest instrument.
“Slavery of the thoughts is FAR worse than bodily slavery,” the GOP gubernatorial hopeful wrote. “Slavery of the thoughts can’t be seen, can’t be made unlawful, and is and all the time has been the best instrument of Devil used in opposition to man….. and males in opposition to one another.”
The day earlier than, Robinson additionally posted that he didn’t “care what Lewis did within the 60s” as a result of the issue was what Lewis was doing that 12 months, in 2017.
(In reality, in 2017, Lewis was calling out Trump for not being “a reputable president,” citing Russia’s interference within the 2016 elections to assist him win.)
However wait, there’s extra!
In Could of 2017, Robinson posted on Fb that the Nineteen Sixties civil rights motion was “crap” and a communist effort.
Mark Robinson’s Fb web page
That very same month, in a very lengthy put up, he wrote that he doesn’t take into account himself a part of the “African-American’ neighborhood” as a result of this neighborhood murders its youngsters and “sucks from the putrid tit of the federal government after which complains about getting bitter milk.”
Going again additional on Fb, Robinson wrote in 2015 that the civil rights motion was “by no means 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.
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Robinson is already identified for his wildly offensive feedback about girls, LGBTQ folks and Muslims, along with fueling bonkers conspiracy theories. The explanation 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 common election on this swing state.
His GOP challengers embody former Rep. Mark Walker, state treasurer Dale Folwell and trial lawyer Invoice Graham, a relative newcomer to the race who has vowed to spend tens of millions of {dollars} of his personal cash. Josh Stein, the state’s legal professional common, is the main Democratic candidate. The present governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, is term-limited out this 12 months.