News

An excerpt.
WARNING: Republicoon babble and ancestor disrespect ahead.

Martin Luther King Jr. was just an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist,” and the 1960s civil rights movement was “crap,” according to a series of Facebook posts by Mark Robinson, the leading Republican candidate to be North Carolina’s next governor.

Robinson, who is currently the state’s lieutenant governor, regularly criticized King and the civil rights movement for years on Facebook ― specifically on MLK Day ― HuffPost found amid a review of his posts. The Black politician also 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.

These posts are surfacing at a time when Robinson, who is on track to be the GOP nominee for governor in November, has been trying to soften his rhetoric, and celebrate King and the civil rights movement.

Last month, former President Donald Trump hailed Robinson as “better than Dr. Martin Luther King” at a campaign event, 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 tell a different story.

In January 2018, Robinson mocked people who celebrate King, who he said was just a subpar pastor. He didn’t mention King by name, but he was clearly talking about the civil rights leader in his series of messages posted on MLK Day that year.

“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 one post.

Robinson also used MLK Day to dismiss the idea that racism is real.

“The ‘state of race relations’ exist chiefly within your own mind,” he said.

“‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty we are free at last!’ Now what?” he said in another post that day.



MARK ROBINSON'S FACEBOOK PAGE

Those posts came exactly one year after Robinson wrote that he planned to work on MLK Day, a federal holiday, to show that he wasn’t “a leach” on society and allowing the government to cut 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 also wrote on MLK Day that year, “I don’t like Communist. No matter what ‘color’ they are.”

The North Carolina Republican later admitted in his 2022 book, “We Are The Majority,” that he had been calling King a communist.