Friday, May 12, 2023

The Uncivil Right's Act

When I keep telling readers that the GOP wants the end of the Civil Rights Era and to eliminate six decades of protections and advancements for Black, Latino, and Asian folks, LBGTQ+ folks, and women, it is not hyperbole or metaphor or theoretical, I literally mean the Black Republican who is North Carolina's current Lt. Governor is running for Governor and wants to reverse the entire Civil Rights era and wants to remove these protections in my home state.
 
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the state’s first Black lieutenant governor and the GOP front-runner for the 2024 gubernatorial race, repeatedly lambasted the “so-called” 1960s Civil Rights Movement, lamenting that “so many freedoms were lost during the civil rights movement.”

In a CNN KFile review of his media appearances over the last five years, Robinson baselessly claimed that the Civil Rights Movement was a communist plot to “subvert capitalism” and used “to subvert free choice and where you go to school and things like that.”

“So many things were lost during the Civil Rights Movement. So many freedoms were lost during the Civil Rights Movement. They shouldn’t have been lost,” Robinson said in a March 2018 podcast episode.

Robinson made many of the comments on the podcast “Politics and Prophecy” with host Chris Levels on Freedomizer Radio, a station whose slogan says “Freedomists Freedomizing Freedom.” Levels is a conspiracy theorist who has shared 9/11 truther posts on Facebook, called the Olympics an illuminati event from Satan and shared posts saying Jews control nearly everything in society.

Robinson’s previously unreported comments criticizing the Civil Rights Movement starkly contrast the rhetoric he recently espoused highlighting his hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, as “an epicenter of the Civil Rights’ Movement.” Greensboro was home to the Woolworth lunch counter sit-in-protests in 1960 started by four Black students, one of whom – Clarence Henderson – Robinson later befriended after launching his political career.

Robinson is currently seen as the GOP favorite for North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, where he will likely face Democrat Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general. The current Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, is term-limited.

After publication, Robinson published a video with Clarence Henderson, a civil rights icon, saying that he “couldn’t be more proud” of Henderson’s work in the Civil Rights Movement and now. Robinson ended the video by saying, “I’ll tell you what. You made history in this state once before. I’m gonna make history again.”

Prior to his political career, Robinson frequently referred to the civil rights’ era as the “so-called Civil Rights Movement” and criticized the Greensboro lunch counter protests as a “ridiculous premise” designed to pull “the rug out from underneath capitalism and free choice and the free market.”

“You talk about the sit-in movement. We’re in a free market system. So we’ve got a place called Woolworth in Greensboro that won’t serve Blacks at the lunch counter. What do you do? You go down there and you sit at the lunch counter and you demand for these people to take your money. How crazy is that?” said Robinson in March 2018. “That’s not what you do in a free market system. What you do in a free market system is you just say, ‘Hey guys, these guys don’t treat people fair. Do not eat here.’”

 

Mark Robinson is absolutely a very real threat to anyone who isn't white, straight, or Christian, and living proof that white supremacy can absolutely be served by someone who isn't white. And yes, He's most likely going to be the GOP candidate to succeed Roy Cooper and he'll get 45% of the vote guaranteed because this won't be a dealbreaker for Republican voters in the state.

Millions will believe him and vote for him.

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