Meet North Carolina’s Holocaust-Denying GOP Nominee for Governor

It’s 2024, so Republicans nominating the scariest candidates possible really shouldn’t shock me anymore. But alas, the dude North Carolina Republicans have chosen to be their nominee for governor has done the impossible and actually made me gasp. Meet Mark Robinson, the state’s current lieutenant governor, whose rap sheet includes Facebook posts laden with Holocaust denialism, defending serially accused child sexual predator Roy Moore in 2017, calling LGBTQ people “filth” and “maggots,” quoting Hitler, and endorsing a six-week abortion ban, which would replace the state’s already devastating 12-week ban. Robinson, who is a Black man, has shared anti-Obama birther memes, advocated for “white pride,” and equated transgender people with Satan. I cannot emphasize enough that we are just getting started; there are layers (infinite layers!) to Robinson’s awfulness.

Despite or perhaps because of said awfulness, Robinson utterly swept the competition on Tuesday night, pulling about 65% of the vote in the Republican primary with his closest rival, Dale Folwell, picking up just 19% of the state’s mild turnout of under 700,000 voters (just 10% of eligible voters in the state). Where Robinson picked up around 665,000 voters, the Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Stein, drew just over 475,000, even though North Carolina’s current governor is Democrat Roy Cooper, who’s termed out. This… feels a little foreboding.

But let’s start with Robinson’s Holocaust denialism, which is fairly recent. In March 2023, Jewish Insider resurfaced social media comments where Robinson questioned whether six million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. In a 2018 Facebook post Robinson wrote, “This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash.” It seems he’s trying to make some sort of point about gun safety laws, but in the process, he, instead, centered his post around questioning the Holocaust’s toll on Jewish people.

Lest you thought he just… misspoke, in a different post from 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. There is also a REASON those same liberals DO NOT FILL the airwaves with programs about the Communist and the 100+ million PEOPLE they murdered throughout the 20th century.” Yep, you read that right: “6 million Jews” is in quotation marks, making it pretty clear Robinson doesn’t believe that figure.

For those unfamiliar with him, please go read his Wikipedia page https://t.co/2SzMCQLdSQ

— OsamaBinDabo (taylor’s version) (tonesetter) (@RyanDay2Hell) March 6, 2024

In July, he then urged people to read Hitler’s writing at a Moms for Liberty event (all after quoting the Nazi leader on social media in 2014). Then, in October, he apologized for the “wording” of his batshit Holocaust comments when he vocally came out in support of Israel amid its war on Gaza. Republicans have predictably bought that bullshit, which they’ve bought from every other politician who’s traded in anti-semitic conspiracy theories while steadfastly standing with Israel. But Robinson hasn’t bothered to explain away the rest of his record, which he seems to be proud of.

All of these bizarre Holocaust comments were still posted and visible while Robinson ran for lieutenant governor in 2020 and won. And now, here he is, running for governor of a state that’s been in utter turmoil since a once-Democratic legislator flipped on her party and gave anti-abortion Republicans veto power over the state’s Democratic governor, allowing them to pass the 12-week ban. Robinson notably supports a six-week abortion ban—once sharing that he paid for his future wife’s abortion in 1989 but regrets it. So, it seems he believes no one in North Carolina should be able to get an abortion because of his personal feelings. Robinson has also pushed the wildly racist anti-abortion talking point that the Black community “murders its children by the millions.”

While Robinson was posting Holocaust denialism on Facebook in 2017 and 2018, he was also using the platform to call the women who accused former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of child sexual abuse liars. (Multiple Alabama women said Moore sexually assaulted them as minors or tried to pursue romantic and sexual relationships with them while they were underage; he was even reportedly banned from a local mall in the 1980s for disturbing onlookers with his frequent attempts to prey on underage girls.) In a particularly offensive move, Robinson shared memes suggesting the women might disappear down a storm drain after Moore lost his election. He also inexplicably claimed Democrats supported serial sexual predator R. Kelly, thereby lacking the moral high ground to oppose Moore, at one point writing, “Many of the people who want to crucify [Moore] are the same people who cheered when OJ was found not guilty and believed Michael Brown was an innocent teenage victim of police brutality.”

North Carolina Republicans just nominated Mark Robinson, a holocaust denying, anti LGBTQ bigot as their nominee for governor.

He recently said trans people should be arrested for using the bathroom. pic.twitter.com/y3YF8vuFz9

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) March 6, 2024

Given Robinson’s proclivity for defending an accused child sexual predator like Moore, it probably wouldn’t surprise you that he’s also harassed the children who survived the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, calling them “spoiled little bastards” and (please be sitting down for this) “media prosti-tots.” Yet, when it comes to smearing LGBTQ people with baseless, bigoted lines of attack, Robinson would have you believe he cares about children’s safety: He’s previously claimed queer people lurk around schools and playgrounds, “trying to spot that little weak child in the neighborhood whose mother and father are not there,” and implicitly blamed working moms for whatever harm these fictional queer goblins inflict on their children.

So, this is Mark Robinson, Republicans’ would-be next governor whose entire Wikipedia page reads like a series of AI-generated jump scares. If North Carolina Republicans triumph, their next leader will be a man who’s referred to Ellen DeGeneres as a “top ranking demon” who’s “proudly serving in Satan’s army,” and baselessly alleged that the dozens of sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby are some conspiracy from “the Illuminati”—which apparently is very real to Robinson, while rape victims are not. Come November, North Carolina voters will have a choice between this guy, and someone who is not this guy—and isn’t that just dandy!