Mark Robinson has touted his support today for the Shalom Act, the bipartisan bill signed by Governor Cooper yesterday to help define and combat antisemitism. But many of Mark Robinson’s own constant attacks on the Jewish community over the last several years clearly fit the definition of antisemitism offered by the bill. Here’s just a small sampling:
- In 2019, Robinson went on a podcast with a cult leader who declared Jewish bankers to be “one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse”. Robinson responded “You’re exactly right!”
- He’s called the notion that Hitler killed millions of Jews to be “hogwash” and “nonsense”. He often refers to the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust in air quotes (““6 million Jews””), signaling that he believes the Jewish community to be lying about death toll.
- He believes that the Marvel movie ‘Black Panther’ is a conspiracy by “Marxist Jews” to steal people’s “shekels”, the Hebrew word for currency.
Worst of all, Mark Robinson has stood by these comments. Asked about them in 2020, he said “I don’t back up from it a bit. May hurt some people’s feelings but those are my beliefs”. In 2023, he said “I apologize for the wording but not for the content”. These posts are still up on his Facebook page to this day.
North Carolina Republicans simply have no answer for their hypocrisy on this. When Speaker Tim Moore was asked about his own party’s nominee being classified as an antisemite by the bill, he said “I don’t want to comment on those comments”.
When Robinson’s campaign was asked today about the contradiction in him declaring support for the bill despite engaging in the antisemitic speech the bill describes, they had no answer and changed the subject. They even had the audacity to imply Josh Stein, the first Jewish candidate for Governor in our state’s history, was the real antisemite in the race. This deflection is laughable and insulting.
On the campaign trail, Robinson dismissed the concerns Jewish North Carolinians have about his anti-Jewish statements by saying, “I’ve moved past them”. What does that mean when he’s refused to apologize for them or take them down?
Mark Robinson may have ‘moved on’ from his record of attacking Jews and denying the Holocaust, but the Jewish community of our state has not and never will.