White Mark Robinson

"I am a black Nazi," declared a user named minisoldr ("little soldier") years ago on the pornographic website Naked Africa. Just days ago, CNN reported that this username belongs to none other than Mark Robinson, the current lieutenant governor of North Carolina, the Republican Party's candidate for governor in the upcoming November elections, and—at least until the CNN investigation—a favourite of presidential candidate Donald Trump, who once called Robinson "Martin Luther King on steroids."

This is the same man who has stated he would like to see slavery reinstated. Probably due to an overdose of steroids.

To be fair, the allegations about Robinson's behaviour on pornographic sites relate to a period before his political career began. That started relatively late, in April 2018, when Robinson passionately addressed a Greensboro city council meeting to oppose the cancellation of a gun show out of respect for the victims of the Parkland school shooting in Florida. Just a month earlier, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz had killed 17 people and wounded another 17 with a semi-automatic rifle. From that point, Robinson's political career skyrocketed. He was promptly invited to a National Rifle Association convention—a lobbying organization whose main mission is to ensure that after each mass shooting, Americans respond with "thoughts and prayers" instead of considering gun control.

Had Robinson limited his outbursts to Nazism, Holocaust denial, antisemitism, and similar themes, many—especially fervent Trump supporters—might have just shrugged it off. But little soldier, who CNN tracked down because he used the same username across other social networks where he identified himself by name, didn't keep his views to himself. On the contrary, upon entering politics, he became one of the loudest and most vulgar warriors in Trump's culture war against "wokeness."

He's not just a climate change denier; he's also a fervent opponent of abortion rights. To Robinson, abortion is murder committed by women who irresponsibly hike up their skirts and men who can't resist dropping their pants. He wasn't embarrassed by the fact that he himself had once paid for an abortion for his then-girlfriend in the 1980s. In fact, he later married her, and—as he confided to fellow users on Naked Africa—extended his commitment to family values to include her sister, with whom the three of them enjoyed many happy hours. That, ultimately, may have been his undoing. Not the Nazism, but the fooling around with his sister-in-law. What Jupiter is allowed, the ox is not.

Robinson's hypocrisy was also revealed in his statements about transgender people, frequent targets in his political speeches. Politician Robinson disdains them; soldier Robinson confessed he often enjoyed watching transgender porn.

In his brief political career, Robinson has managed to deny the Holocaust, endorse theories about satanic Marxists and international Jewish conspiracies, and—above all—attack the LGBT community. This is no surprise. Intolerance and hatred toward LGBTQ+ individuals are a unifying theme among political extremists, authoritarian populists, and opportunistic hate-mongers across continents. Despite apparent ideological differences, homophobes—from Moscow to Miami, and from Ljubljana to Alabama—build their power paradigms on animosity toward minority groups. The Homophobic International. Homintern. From Russia with hate.

People who think about homosexuals and other sexual minorities like Mark Robinson exist in Slovenia too. Don’t be fooled by their claims that they "have nothing against homosexuals" but just oppose the "LGBT ideology." This is an attempt to camouflage their hatred and intolerance as a fight against being openly criticized for their hatred. It’s cunning, vile, and effective.

Around the same time CNN published its exposé on little soldier Robinson, a former Slovenian interior minister posted on social media in response to the nomination of EU Commission candidates: "Not just members of communist secret services and snitches—in the new European Commission, the homosexual lobby will also play a key role. The French commissioner candidate is a former partner of Prime Minister Attal. Did von der Leyen count him under the male or female quota?" For the uninitiated, the "homosexual lobby" trope is used to discredit any situation by claiming it involves, or is influenced by, at least one homosexual person. For example, if a gay man boards Bus 6 next to you at the main post office in Ljubljana, your ride to Črnuče isn’t just public transit—it’s part of the homosexual lobby. Ridiculous, vile, yet effective.

Another similarity between the two stories is that both protagonists caused problems for their bosses. Robinson’s pornographic revelations came at a very inconvenient time for Republicans and Trump, further widening the polling gap behind the Democratic candidate in the North Carolina governor’s race and possibly threatening Trump’s chances in the state—jeopardizing his path back to the White House. Meanwhile, the Slovenian ex-minister’s homophobic outburst, which stirred quite a storm in Brussels, surely won't help Slovenia's commissioner nominee as she prepares for her hearing before the European Parliament.

What both stories share is the lack of public rebuke from their respective party leaders. In the U.S., Republican politicians began scrubbing their online praise of Robinson, who was quietly removed from Trump’s North Carolina rally guest list. In Slovenia, I saw no distancing from the ex-minister’s homophobic comments by his political allies. On the contrary.

The difference is that Robinson denied everything in true Trumpian fashion, calling it a false conspiracy by liberal media and corrupt Democrats. Our little soldier, on the other hand, bravely stood by his words: "What did I say that isn't true?" he asked in response to criticism. The homosexual lobby, right? Heh, heh, heh.

The analogy between the two cases isn’t perfect. Robinson did things our former minister didn’t—and probably vice versa. But both examples are symptomatic of the depths to which political discourse has sunk in both the U.S. and Slovenia. Hatred and intolerance are framed as battles for freedom of speech, while tolerance, respect, and humanistic values are framed as threats to national survival and societal evil. The fact that Robinson’s scandal seriously endangered his political future while in Slovenia similar outbursts never carry any consequences suggests that, at least in this regard, we've sunk even deeper than the Americans. Apparently, it’s still riskier to be a black Nazi in America than to be the white Mark Robinson in Slovenia.