The last time we checked in here with North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson — the MAGA Republican candidate for governor in the state — it was to read this remarkable profile in The Assembly, “Ex-Porn Shop Employees Say Mark Robinson Was A Regular. He Denies It.”
Jeffrey Billman and Joe Killian’s thoroughly, carefully sourced report is not a hit piece. The former workers at the porn shops Robinson frequented in the 1990s and early 2000s speak well of him as a friendly, gregarious regular who greeted them by name and sometimes even brought pizza* to share with his friends before heading to the private video booths where he spent a few hours, several nights a week.
Those 20th-century porn shops are gone now, their business model made defunct by the internet.
And it turns out that when all the pornography moved to the internet, so did Mark Robinson. And it seems he spent even more time on his favorite porn sites than he previously spent in his favorite porn shops.
That is, in itself, not much of a big deal. Yes, Robinson is an ultra-conservative culture warrior who has long enjoyed the unqualified endorsement of evangelical political groups like the Family Research Council and the Christian Broadcasting Network. So the revelation that he’s also a decades-long enthusiastic user of pornography might be mildly newsworthy for exposing yet another moral scold as a hypocrite.
But that’s not the story here. The story here is that Robinson also participated in chat forums on his favorite porn sites — using the same logins and screen names he still often uses as lieutenant governor — and the things he voluntarily said in those forums are horrifying: “‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum.”
Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery, a CNN KFile investigation found.
Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a “perv.”
The comments, which Robinson denies making, predate his entry into politics and current stint as North Carolina’s lieutenant governor. They were made under a username that CNN was able to identify as Robinson by matching a litany of biographical details and a shared email address between the two.
Many of Robinson’s comments were gratuitously sexual and lewd in nature. They were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa,” a pornographic website that includes a message board. The comments were made under the username minisoldr, a moniker Robinson used frequently online.
Robinson listed his full name on his profile for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numerous websites across the internet for decades.
CNN is reporting only a small portion of Robinson’s comments on the website given their graphic nature.
A big chunk of that jaw-dropping CNN report outlines their exhaustive, ironclad work demonstrating that this “Black Nazi” and “perv” named “minisoldr” is, in fact, Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. This is presented both as documentation confirming the accuracy of CNN’s reporting and as a trail of breadcrumbs for anyone wishing to follow-up on their R-rated story to find more of the X-rated details. Plenty of other reporters took the baton and ran with it, which is how — in addition to all of the appalling statements in the CNN story, we have also learned about Robinson’s love for Mein Kampf and his bragging about threesomes with his wife’s sister and another woman.
I’m inclined to be charitable to reporters Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck due to the wretched hours they must have spent sifting through the chat archives at Nude Africa, but much of their thorough report reflects the confusion about “hypocrisy” reflected in the quote above about Robinson’s enjoyment of transgender pornography.
Yes, Robinson enjoys masturbating to pornography involving transgender actors “despite” his opposition to civil rights and legal equality for transgender people. But why should that be surprising or seem contradictory given that Robinson also enjoys masturbating to pornography involving women “despite” his opposition to civil rights and legal equality for women?
And what is contradictory about an enthusiastic endorser of mass deportation referring to himself as a “Nazi”? That’s not hypocrisy, that’s consistency.
The “hypocrisy” charge is no more accurate for Mark Robinson than it is for the other Republican candidate in that picture above. This isn’t about exposing “hypocrites” who preach one thing and live the opposite. It’s about understanding that these things are not opposites at all.
Robinson’s infidelity, his admiration for Hitler, and his degrading views of women are perfectly congruent with his religious-right/MAGA politics. The “secret life exposed” in his porn-site chat forum commentaries is utterly consistent with his public statements, actions, and agenda.
This is who Mark Robinson has been in public and it is who he has been in private and there is no contradiction, no hypocrisy here. This is who he is. This is what MAGA is. This is who they are.
* Or, rather, “pizza.” Robinson was, at that time, the manager of the local Papa John’s franchise. I can’t imagine enjoying Papa John’s anywhere, but the idea of eating anything inside the private booths at a jack-shack is especially horrifying.
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