North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson on April 9, 2022. Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh July 5, 2023

Mark Robinson, the GOP frontrunner for North Carolina governor in the 2024 contest who has been accused of trafficking in antisemitism, encouraged the reading of quotes from Adolf Hitler and other dictators at a conservative conference this weekend.

“Whether you’re talking about Chairman Mao, whether you’re talking about Stalin,” Robinson said in a speech at the Moms for Liberty annual conference in Philadelphia on Sunday, “it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes.” The remarks were published on Wednesday by Heartland Signal, a Twitter account monitoring politics in the Midwest. 

Robinson, currently lieutenant governor, recently likened the current political climate in the U.S. to Nazi-era Germany and compared his political opponents to Hitler. He also veered into Holocaust denial, writing in a social media post that the “liberal media deliberately focuses on the topic of the Nazi and their purported murder of ‘6 million Jews’ for a specific purpose.”

Moms for Liberty has advocated for book bans in school districts across the country. The gathering in Philadelphia featured prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, among other GOP presidential candidates. 

One of the organization’s chapters in Indiana came under fire last month and later apologized for quoting Adolf Hitler in a newsletter. The group’s citation of Hitler is not an isolated incident. Media Matters, a nonprofit group that monitors news outlets, on Friday shared images from a 2021 presentation in Flagler County, Florida, that juxtaposed quotes and images of both Hitler and Abraham Lincoln. The Hitler quote featured in the Moms for Liberty presentation — “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future!” — is the same line that appeared in a recent newsletter of the Indiana chapter.

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

Don't just read the Forward - invest in it. Make a matched gift today.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$120 $180 $360 OTHER AMOUNT