By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel -
The more the anti-Semitic comments by North Carolina’s recently elected Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson are revealed, the deeper he appears to be digging in with his refusal to apologize.
Voted in to the position in November, Robinson has a colored history of “a litany of troubling past comments in which he denigrated Jews, Muslims, transgender people and Black voters who support Democrats,” Jewish Insider reported.
Over the years, Robinson has invoked a number of anti-Semitic tropes in posts on his Facebook account in which he decries a “globalist” conspiracy to “destroy” former President Donald Trump.
TV station WRAL in Raleigh noted that in a Facebook post in 2018, Robinson railed against Black people for celebrating the highly successful movie Black Panther, saying they “refuse to acknowledge the pure sorry state of their current condition” and instead “get so excited about a fictional ‘hero’ created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by a satanic Marxist.”
The Black Panther character was the creation of the late comic book genius Stan Lee. Robinson then used a Yiddish slur alleging the movie “was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.”
In a May 2019 interview on YouTube, Robinson invoked the “one-world government” conspiracy and agreed with his interviewer who said that it involved the Rothschild “international bankers that rule every single national or federal reserve-type style of central bank in every single country.”
Confronted with his previous comments, Robinson said at a news conference earlier this month that he has nothing to take back.
“When I made those posts as a private citizen, I was speaking directly to issues that I’m passionate about,” Robinson said. “As a public servant, I have to put those opinions behind me and do what’s right for everyone in North Carolina,” he added. “I’m grown enough to do that.”
Several Jewish officials told JI they were appalled by Robinson’s comments.
“His refusal to apologize is troubling and unacceptable to us,” said Matt Brooks, director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “These kinds of comments have no place in our society.”
Congresswoman Kathy Manning from Robinson’s hometown of Greensboro, NC, told JI the statements were “appalling.”
“His hate-filled rhetoric is laced with sexism, discrimination and anti-Semitism,” said Manning, former chairwoman of the Jewish Federations of North America. “His words contribute to the division in our nation that is fueling the rise in hate crimes and extremism, and they degrade the office he occupies.”
Before he was elected, Robinson told WRAL that he stood by what he said.
“I don’t back up from them a bit,” Robinson said of his posts. “May hurt some peoples’ feelings, some things that people may not like, but those are my personal opinions.”
