On Sunday, June 30, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson advocated for the extrajudicial assassination of anyone he considered enemies of Christian America, according to The New Republic.
“Some people need to be killed. It’s a question of necessity!” Robinson, the current Republican governor nominee, spoke in front of churchgoers at Lake Church in White Lake, North Carolina.
Robinson stated during his speech, “We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent,” according to The New Republic. The politician proceeded to refer to and compare the alleged foes to the Nazis during World War II.
“We didn’t debate, capitulate, or say, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t fight the Nazis so fiercely.’ No, they are bad. Kill them,” Robinson said, adding, “Time to call out, um, those people in green and have them deal with it. Or let the boys in blue handle it.”
Robinson did not identify the “folks” but did say that there are “wicked people doing wicked things, torturing, murdering, and raping.”
“The further we start sliding into making 1776 a distant memory and the tenets of socialism and communism start coming into clearer focus,” the longer he talked. “They are watching us. They are listening to us. They are tracking us. They grow angry with you. They cancel you. They doxx you. They remove you from social media. “They come in and shut down your business.”
The church’s pastor, Cameron McGill, supported Robinson’s remarks. “Without a doubt, those he deemed worthy of death [were] those seeking to kill us,” McGill told The New Republic, adding Robinson “certainly did not imply the taking of any innocent lives.”
According to Robinson’s campaign communications director, Mike Lonergan, Robinson 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 has previously received criticism for his public utterances. In 2021, he published a paper claiming that North Carolina public school instructors were “abusing” their positions to indoctrinate kids. His political career began in 2018 when he criticized gun legislation and mocked the survivors of the February 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
According to The New York Times, he has made racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic assaults during his career, as well as promoted conspiracy theories such as Holocaust denial.
He has also spoken out against the LGBTQ+ community, calling its members “filth,” and has stated that trans women should be arrested for entering women’s restrooms, according to the Associated Press and The Washington Post.
Robinson has also made racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-Asian statements on his social media pages, according to PEOPLE.
Former President Donald Trump has endorsed the lawmaker, who is running against Democratic contender Josh Stein in the North Carolina governor election this autumn.