On March 5, 2024, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was declared the Republican Party's winner in the state's race for the governor's mansion. Days earlier, his campaign was endorsed by former U.S. President Donald Trump. "This is Martin Luther King on steroids," Trump told a crowd that he said of Robinson. "I think you're better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two."
In the aftermath of Robinson's victory — and in the months that preceded Super Tuesday — some of his past comments about a variety of subjects were resurfaced online, in the news and on late-night TV shows including "Late Night with Seth Meyers," "The Daily Show" and "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver."
For example, Snopes previously reported about a video in which, some people believed, Robinson once said he was against women having the right to vote. However, the full video showed that this mistaken belief spawned out of a partial quote that was shared without its original context. As of March 11, the partial quote removed from its context remains available on both MSNBC's website and YouTube channel, in a video from an MSNBC broadcast in which hosts Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow discussed Robinson's remarks. A misleading caption next to the video says of Robinson, "He states he wants women to not be able to vote."
In this article, we provide information about a sampling of Robinson's past comments that have been discussed online or received mentions in news articles, specifically regarding the subjects of Adolf Hitler, antisemitism, Jews and the Holocaust. Snopes contacted Robinson's campaign by email on March 7 but did not receive a response within four days.
Note: After this article was originally published, Snopes received a response from Mike Lonergan, the communications director for Robinson's campaign. Additional information has since been added to near the end of this story.
'A Hitler-quoting Extremist'
On March 5, 2024, The Guardian reported, "Hitler-quoting candidate wins North Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary." Similarly, The New Republic published the headline, "Meet North Carolina's GOP Governor Candidate: A Hitler-Quoting Extremist." Both stories also noted that North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein — who is Jewish — had won the Democratic primary.
The two headlines referenced a 2014 post on Robinson's personal Facebook account. The post read, "History who said it #1; 'Pride in one's own race - and that does not imply contempt for other races - is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves… They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong.'"
In the summer of 2023, three years after he was elected as North Carolina's lieutenant governor, Robinson defended the old Facebook post while speaking at an event for the conservative group Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia.
However, Robinson's defense of the 2014 post was taken out of context online, as Reuters reported. The X account @HeartlandSignal shared a 25-second video clip from Robinson's appearance at the event and failed to include the bolded portion below:
They know the story. They know the playbook that they always have. Lie. Deride. Besmirch. Make innuendos. Tell flat-out untruths. "Because you quoted Hitler, you support Hitler." I guess every history book in America supports Hitler now. They all quote him.
And here's the thing. Whether you're talking about Adolf Hitler, whether you're talking about Chairman Mao, whether you're talking about Stalin, whether you're talking about Pol Pot, whether you're talking about Castro in Cuba or whether you're talking about a dozen other despots around the globe, it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes.
It's time for us to start teaching our children some of those quotes. It's time for us to start teaching our children about the dirty, despicable, awful things that those communists and socialist despots did in our history.
On Robinson's X account, he pointed out the truth of the matter, which was that his remarks defending his previous remarks were taken out of context, writing: "Only Lying Leftists would take a speech DENOUNCING dictators, communists, and socialists and try to make it seem like I support them. Despicable."
His full speech is available in a video posted on the Moms for Liberty YouTube channel.
'So Sick' of Discussions About Nazis and Hitler Quote
On July 7, 2023, an account on X known as Republicans Against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) posted that Robinson had said he was "so sick" of seeing discussions about Nazis and Hitler.
"I am so sick of seeing and hearing people still talk about Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were."
-Mark Robinson, leading Republican candidate for NC governor.Where's the outrage? Sickening!
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 7, 2023
This was a genuine quote from Robinson's Facebook feed. He made this post on May 31, 2017, writing, "I am so sick of seeing and hearing people STILL talk about Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were. NEWS FLASH PEOPLE, THE NAZIS (National Socialist) ARE GONE! We did away with them."
He then went on to mention communism and other subjects in the same post.
'6 Million Jews' in Quotes
On November 26, 2017, Robinson posted on Facebook, "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."
Robinson's post included quotation marks around "6 million Jews," a fact that was pointed out in a report from Jewish Insider.
The genocide known as the Holocaust was a systematic, state-sponsored killing of 6 million Jewish men, women and children, and millions of others, by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II, Brittanica.com published. More information about the Holocaust can be read on AnneFrank.org, Yad Vashem and the website for the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum.
'Hogwash' Quote
On March 6, 2024, X user @SawyerHackett posted, "Actual quote from the new Republican nominee for Governor of NC, Mark Robinson: 'This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash.'"
Actual quote from the new Republican nominee for Governor of NC, Mark Robinson:
"This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash."
— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) March 6, 2024
This was a genuine quote that came from a Facebook post Robinson made in 2018.
On Oct. 12, 2023, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based NBC affiliate WRAL reported, "Robinson in a past Facebook post called reports of the Holocaust 'hogwash.'" The article also included a quote from a spokesperson for Stein — the state attorney general and 2024 Democratic primary winner — who said, "Mark Robinson called the Holocaust 'hogwash' and now uses the slaughter of Israelis and Americans to perform a transparent political stunt. This is as close as he should ever get to being governor."
From our reading of Robinson's full, original post — as well as Robinson's own comments that he added under the post in the hours and days that followed — it did not appear in this specific instance he had said he believed concentration camps and the Holocaust were "hogwash." Rather, the three-sentence post appeared to be an attempt to make a point about gun-control measures.
The full post read, "The center and leftist leaning Weimar Republic put heavy gun ownership restrictions on German citizens long before the Nazis took power. This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash. Repeating that hogwash makes the conservative argument against the current attempts by liberal Marxist to push Unconstitutional gun control measures in this Nation look FOOLISH."
In October 2015, PolitiFact looked at the claim that gun-control measures allowed the Nazis to carry out the atrocities of the Holocaust and rated it as "false." One of the specific pieces of information that the story focused on concerned a passage in Dr. Ben Carson's book "A More Perfect Union." At the time, Carson was one of several Republican candidates for president.
The passage in Carson's book read, "German citizens were disarmed by their government in the late 1930s, and by the mid-1940s Hitler's regime had mercilessly slaughtered six million Jews and numerous others whom they considered inferior. Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating deceitful propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance." The PolitiFact writer called Carson's claim "a misreading of history."
Passage in Robinson's 2022 Book
Following the initial publishing of this story, Mike Lonergan, communications director for Robinson's campaign for governor, told Snopes by email that the gubernatorial candidate's 2022 book contained more information about this subject.
In "We Are The Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot," Robinson wrote about the fallout from one or more of his Facebook posts:
People took it the wrong way, and I can see why people took it the wrong way. It came off the wrong way. When people called me and asked about it, that's what I told them. And I apologized to them.
It's the only time I've ever apologized for anything I put on Facebook. It did come out wrong. I knew the truth of what I was trying to say, but I should have chosen different words. I was very angry at myself for doing that too. I'm usually very, very careful about what I write on Facebook, even though when I write forcefully, it might not seem like it sometimes. But I am very careful about what I write, and at that moment I was wrong.
Lonergan also claimed, "After taking office in 2021, [Robinson] met with dozens of rabbis and Jewish leaders from across North Carolina." He said Robinson "had a discussion with them about the post, expressed remorse and communicated a desire to learn more about the Jewish community in an effort to understand how he can better serve them as an elected official."
The Times of Israel reported that one such meeting was organized by the Greensboro Jewish Federation. The city of Raleigh's News and Observer newspaper also appeared to report about the same meeting. Snopes reached out to the Greensboro Jewish Federation to confirm the details of the meeting and will update this story if a response is received, or if we locate further information about additional meetings.
Additional Notes
The aforementioned reporting from Jewish Insider said that Mark Walker, one of the Republican candidates facing off against Robinson in the governor's race, had denounced Robinson's past comments. "His history of antisemitic remarks is troubling," Walker told the publication. "His denial of the Holocaust reaches a whole different level and should be strongly condemned in every aspect possible."
The stories also made note of other past Facebook posts from Robinson about the 1977 TV miniseries "Roots," the 2018 feature film "Black Panther" and other subjects.