1). “MAGA Governor Candidate's 'Some Folks Need Killing' Rant Sparks Backlash”, Jul 05, 2024, Kaitlin Lewis, Newsweek, at < https://www.newsweek.com/maga-
2). “MAGA Gov Candidate’s Ugly, Hateful Rant: “Some Folks Need Killing!”: Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, has a long history of incendiary comments. But he may have topped himself this time”, Jul 5, 2024, Greg Sargent, The New Republic (TNR), at < https://newrepublic.com/
3). “WATCH: Mark Robinson Calls Public School Teachers 'Wicked People' ”, Aug 29, 2023, Democratic Governors Association, at < https://democraticgovernors.
4). “JUST IN: Mark Robinson recently urged parents not to send their children to public schools and attacked teachers as 'wicked people.' ”, Jul 9, 2023, 'X' (formerly Twitter), Democratic Governors Association, duration of video 32 seconds, at < https://x.com/DemGovs/status/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: Mark Robinson has kept on making statements, against civilization and for violent attacks on people who oppose the MAGA project, in his crazed run for Governor of North Carolina. Item 1)., “MAGA Governor Candidate's ….” excerpted some of the most incendiary of Robinson's comments, Including this gem: “Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it. It's not a matter of vengeance. It's not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It's a matter of necessity.” (Emphasis added)
This statement was part of an approximately 30 minute speech, delivered by Republican North Carolina Gubernatorial Candidate Mark Robinson at Lake Church, on June 30 in White Lake, North Carolina. I am posting some excerpts taken from Item 1)., and Item 2)., “MAGA Gov Candidate’s Ugly, ….”. At this point I am not aware of a video of just the full speech itself, however there is a 2 minute 58 second clip, with a live link near the bottom of the text of Item 2, that shows Robinson delivering the part of his half-hour speech, in which he delivered his exhortation to violent political actions. Text versions of excerpts of those statements are reproduced, in the text below.
Robinson did say that “freedom is worth protecting 'at all cost.', …. and that 'Folks, you see, there's a class of people in this nation that want you to forget that,' Robinson said during the roughly half-an-hour speech. 'They want control. They don't care about Democrats, they don't care about Republicans, they don't care about anything. They care about control.' ”
He alluded to World War 2 saying “ …. (after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941), 'We didn't quibble about it. We didn't argue about it. We didn't fight about it. We killed it.'
" 'Some liberal somewhere is gonna say that sounds awful. Too bad,' Robinson added. 'Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it. It's not a matter of vengeance. It's not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It's a matter of necessity.' " (Emphasis added)
There is a video of the full Church Service at Lake Church. That is linked to from “Robinson's speech to Lake Church” in the first sentence of the second paragraph of the article in Item 1). That video “June 30, 2024 God and Country Sunday” is rather lengthy at 2:17:27 and is posted at Facebook at < https://www.facebook.com/
Robinson is a particularly virulent MAGA Fascist. He has made statements that he wants to outlaw abortion TOTALLY, saying about women that once an egg has been “fertilized” a woman's body “is no longer her own”. Robinson, in general, uses the crudest rhetorical flourishes and bombast to present his authoritarian pronouncements. He appeared on a right-wing radio show and said that if he were governor he would work with the legislature to pass a bill that said “You can't have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason, and in a speech he said that there is “No Compromise on abortion”. For pregnant women he says “You weren't responsible enough to keep your skirt down”. (all emphases in original) (See,
Of course he is far too strident, in addition to being abysmally ignorant of the pertinent science to use the actual terms for very early fetal development. After the ovum, the egg cell, has been penetrated by a sperm cell and now has the full complement of 26 chromosomes, it is referred to as a Zygote. Many changes take place and at about 10 days post fertilization the developing embryo forms a blastocyst, which is the term for the stage of the embryo that actually implants into the Uterine lining. It is not until about the 9th week that the term fetus is used for the developing embryo.
In addition to his pronouncements on women's rights, Robinson has, on several occasions, called Public School Teachers “Wicked People”. Item 3)., “WATCH: Mark Robinson Calls ….” points out that:
“North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson rose to prominence for not mincing words on education – but as he hurtles toward the 2024 Republican gubernatorial nomination, that frankness is emerging as a potential liability.
“As recently as last month, Robinson referred to public school teachers as 'wicked people' in remarks before a church audience. Later in July, he said parents “want that choice to be able to take their children out of those failing public schools.” And in his 2022 book, Robinson wrote that if he were 'totally' in charge of education in North Carolina, he’d stop the teaching of social studies and science in grades one through five.
“ 'We’re going to work like heck in Raleigh to make sure these schools get straightened out, but until they do, I’m gonna tell you what you need to do: If they won’t do right, you need to come out from among them, make your own school,' Robinson said in a July speech. 'Do not turn your children over to these wicked people. Do not.'
“…[Robinson] wrote it in his own book, We Are The Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot.'If I were totally in charge of education,' he wrote, he would focus solely on 'reading, writing and math' from grades one to five and not teach things like social studies, science, and other issues.”
Item 4)., “JUST IN: Mark Robinson recently ….” is the actual 32 second video, showing Robinson speaking to some Right-wing Christians, apparently on July 9th of 2023, and exhorting them to not send their children to public school where 'these wicked people' work. It is posted on “X”, at < https://x.com/DemGovs/status/
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MAGA governor candidate's "some folks need killing" rant sparks backlash
North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is facing backlash for a clip circulating online of the MAGA Republican saying that "some folks need killing."
In the video, which was taken from Robinson's speech to Lake Church on June 30 in White Lake, North Carolina, the lieutenant governor speaks about the meaning of the upcoming July 4 holiday, and tells those in the audience that freedom is worth protecting "at all cost." Robinson is running for North Carolina's gubernatorial election this fall and has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
"Folks, you see, there's a class of people in this nation that want you to forget that," Robinson said during the roughly half-an-hour speech. "They want control. They don't care about Democrats, they don't care about Republicans, they don't care about anything. They care about control."
Robinson later on invoked comparisons to the United States military's actions in World War II, saying that after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, "We didn't quibble about it. We didn't argue about it. We didn't fight about it. We killed it."
"Some liberal somewhere is gonna say that sounds awful. Too bad," Robinson added. "Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it. It's not a matter of vengeance. It's not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It's a matter of necessity."
When reached for comment on the video, Mike Lonergan, the communications director for Robinson's gubernatorial campaign, told Newsweek that the lieutenant governor was "speaking about the enemies of the U.S. and the Allied Powers during World War II, the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy."
Robinson's comments circulated online after a report by the progressive news site The New Republic on Friday, and several individuals accused the Republican of appearing to call for "political violence," including the X, formerly Twitter, account Republicans Against Trump. North Carolina Representative Wiley Nickel, a Democrat, also posted a clip of Robinson's comments calling them "scary."
"Mark Robinson used his religious platform on July 4 to call for violence," Nickel wrote. "This isn't leadership. This isn't faith. This is unhinged."
Justin Parmenter, an author who often posts criticisms of Trump, also flagged Robinson's comments in a post to X Friday, writing, "This man is not cut out for leadership."
"Mark Robinson called public school teachers 'wicked people,'" posted the Democratic Party of North Carolina (NCDP), referring to a past comment by Robinson. "Now he's saying wicked people 'need killing' as a 'matter of necessity.'"
"Anyone who talks about teachers the same way he talks about terrorists is too dangerous to be North Carolina's next governor," the NCDP added.
Robinson has faced backlash in the past for his public statements, including after referring to the LGBTQ community as "filth" and releasing a report in 2021 that claimed public school teachers in the state of North Carolina were "abusing" their positions to indoctrinate students.
Robinson's campaign responded to the backlash Friday saying that it was "lies."
"Absolute gutter lies from the shameless hacks of [President Joe Biden] campaign & [NCDP] they're defending the Axis powers when Mark Robinson was applauding the brave Americans that fought in and won WWII," Lonergan posted to X on Friday.
Update 07/5/24, 6:10 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional comment from Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's campaign.
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MAGA Gov Candidate’s Ugly, Hateful Rant: “Some Folks Need Killing!”
Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, has a long history of incendiary comments. But he may have topped himself this time.
Mark Robinson, the extremist GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, appeared to endorse political violence in a bizarre and extended rant he delivered on June 30 in a small-town church.
“Some folks need killing!” Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, shouted during a roughly half-hour-long speech in Lake Church in the tiny town of White Lake, in the southeast corner of the state. “It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity!”
Robinson’s call for the “killing” of “some folks” came during an extended diatribe in which he attacked an extraordinary assortment of enemies. These ranged from “people who have evil intent” to “wicked people” to those doing things like “torturing and murdering and raping” to socialists and Communists. He also invoked those supposedly undermining America’s founding ideals and leftists allegedly persecuting conservatives by canceling them and doxxing them online.
In all this, Robinson appeared to endorse lethal violence against these unnamed enemies, particularly on the left, though he wasn’t exactly clear on which “folks” are the ones who “need killing.”
Robinson, a self-described “MAGA Republican,” has a long history of wildly radical and unhinged moments. He has linked homosexuality to pedophilia, called for the arrest of trans women, pushed hallucinogenic antisemitic conspiracy theories, endorsed the vile “birther” conspiracy about Barack Obama, described Michelle Obama as a man, hinted at the need to violently oppose federal law enforcement and the government, and posted memes mocking and denying the brutal, violent assault on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, among many other things.
His latest rant is yet another example of an ugly game widely played on the MAGA right, one supercharged by Donald Trump. It entails hinting that right-wing political violence is necessary and justified because a ubiquitous, all-seeing, all-powerful leftist threat—one that is pure invention—is already supposedly attacking and persecuting conservatives on a mass scale.
Here’s what Robinson said (bold mine):
We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent. You know, there’s a time when we used to meet evil on the battlefield, and guess what we did to it? We killed it! … When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, what did we do? We flew to Japan! And we killed the Japanese Army and Navy! … We didn’t argue and capitulate and talk about, well, maybe we shouldn’t fight the Nazis that hard. No, they’re bad. Kill them. Some liberal somewhere is going to say that sounds awful. Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to.
Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity! When you have wicked people doing wicked things, torturing and murdering and raping. It’s time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them handled. Or those boys in blue and have them go handle it.…
We need to start handling our business again.… Don’t you feel it slipping away? … The further we start sliding into making 1776 a distant memory and the tenets of socialism and communism start coming into clearer focus. They’re watching us. They’re listening to us. They’re tracking us. They get mad at you. They cancel you. They dox you. They kick you off social media. They come in and close down your business. Folks, it’s happening … because we have forgotten who we are.
Robinson might try to argue that he only meant that our enemies during World War II—and torturers and murderers and rapists today—deserve “killing.” But the sum total of his remarks plainly suggests otherwise. He seemed to analogize the need to kill World War II enemies to the need to kill enemies in the present, enemies who harbor “evil intent,” enemies conservatives are struggling against “now.”
What’s more, Robinson described those enemies in very broad terms. He suggested that conservatives will lose the spirit of 1776 (meaning their country) to enemies who harass them on social media and elsewhere unless they are prepared to unleash the army and cops to “handle” (i.e., kill) them. These appear to be the “folks” who “need killing.”
Indeed, when Robinson predicted that liberals will say “that sounds awful,” and “too bad,” he himself appeared to anticipate that his call for “killing” would be perceived as a call for political violence.
The Reverend Cameron McGill, the Pastor of Lake Church, confirmed to me that he and Robinson expected these remarks about “killing” to be “scrutinized,” but defended them.
“Without a doubt, those he deemed worthy of death [were] those seeking to kill us,” Pastor Cameron said in an email, adding that Robinson “certainly did not imply the taking of any innocent lives” and that the rest of his speech was “non-controversial.” There was no formal media presence during the speech, the Pastor confirmed.
Video of the speech was clipped by a Democrat, who took it off Lake Church’s video of the event on Facebook, which is still there in full. The Democrat flagged it for The New Republic. You can watch it here:
https://assets.newrepublic.com/assets/videos/39554f5b315540907b316e880d6be8ff2398af64
This tendency on the right to invoke an infinitely hallucinogenic and malleable leftist enemy to justify in advance the political violence that the right itself wants to unleash on its enemies is a near-daily occurrence. Another ripe example came just this week from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the brain trust behind Project 2025’s radical blueprint for MAGA authoritarian rule under a second Trump presidency.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts declared.
In this, Roberts essentially said that if liberals and Democrats too vehemently resist MAGA’s intent to stock the government with corrupt loyalists to Trump and unleash mass persecution of the opposition, violence will be necessary to crush them—and if so, it will be their fault for not meekly accepting what they have coming to them. Meanwhile, Trump himself recently suggested that political violence may erupt if the presidential election isn’t conducted with “fairness” and is stolen from him, by which he really means, “if I don’t win.”
Robinson’s new comments are also notable for political reasons. They’re a reminder that the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina is so extreme that the race to replace term-limited Governor Roy Cooper—Robinson is running against Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein—may prove competitive, even in this red-leaning state.
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WATCH: Mark Robinson Calls Public School Teachers “Wicked People”
A new report from The Messenger sheds light on North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson’s extreme attacks on education, including as recently as last month when he urged parents not to send their children to public schools and attacked teachers as “wicked people.”
This is not the first time Robinson has attacked North Carolina’s public school system. In his 2022 memoir, Robinson suggested that on his watch schools “would focus solely on ‘reading, writing and math’ from grades one to five and not teach things like social studies, science, and other issues.”
Read more about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s extreme attacks on public education:
- North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson rose to prominence for not mincing words on education – but as he hurtles toward the 2024 Republican gubernatorial nomination, that frankness is emerging as a potential liability.
- As recently as last month, Robinson referred to public school teachers as “wicked people” in remarks before a church audience. Later in July, he said parents “want that choice to be able to take their children out of those failing public schools.” And in his 2022 book, Robinson wrote that if he were “totally” in charge of education in North Carolina, he’d stop the teaching of social studies and science in grades one through five.
- “We’re going to work like heck in Raleigh to make sure these schools get straightened out, but until they do, I’m gonna tell you what you need to do: If they won’t do right, you need to come out from among them, make your own school,” Robinson said in a July speech. “Do not turn your children over to these wicked people. Do not.”
- …[Robinson] wrote it in his own book, We Are The Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot.“If I were totally in charge of education,” he wrote, he would focus solely on “reading, writing and math” from grades one to five and not teach things like social studies, science, and other issues.
- “In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies. We don’t need to be teaching science. We surely don’t need to be talking about equity and social justice,” Robinson wrote, adding later, “That’s the course I would set it in North Carolina.”
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