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The leading Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina has a long history of mocking teenage survivors of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, CNN reported.
Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, who recently announced his candidacy for governor, called survivors who have called for legislation to prevent gun violence “spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN” and “spoiled little bastards.”
Mr Robinson rose to prominence after he spoke at a city council meeting opposing a measure that would would have canceled a local gun show right after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A clip of his remarks subsequently went viral.
Shortly after the shooting, Mr Robinson compared the students who launched the “March for Our Lives” organisation to communists. In one Facebook post, he mocked the activists posing for photos with an image that had a caption of “the look you get when you let the devil give you a ride on a river of blood to ’15 minutes of Fameville.’”
On Twitter, he also mocked the students for when they “got sassy” with adults and said adults should make sure “CHILDREN knew their place.”
Mr Robinson has since became a sensation in right-wing circles, appearing in videos for the National Rifle Association. Mr Robinson also defended the 1970 shooting of Kent State University students protesting the Vietnam War.
“The shooting that happened at Kent State now, I don’t know how much you know about that shooting at Kent State, but people have got to understand it,” he said in a 2018 podcast interview. “We have the constitutional right to peacefully assemble. Now peacefully assemble does not mean you could throw bricks at National Guardsmen, bust out windows and block traffic. Once you cross that line into violence and the disruption of public transportation and public services and start blocking the entrances of a federal building, you are no longer a protester.”
This came despite the fact that the Nixon administration-commission President’s Commission on Campus Unrest said the shooting was unjustified.
In yet another problematic post on Facebook, Mr Robinson also called the March for Our Lives event in Washington “a march of pawns in Washington today.” He tweeted that one college-aged attendee “put that sign down and go read a book dummy” and “They live. They breathe. They’ll procreate. #funnybutscary.”
Mr Robinson also called March for Our Lives leader David Hogg a “commie stooge,” activist and survivor X Gonzalez “that bald chick” and called them “stupid kids.”
North Carolina currently has a Democratic Governor in Roy Cooper and Mr Robinson won his first race in 2020 the same year Mr Cooper won re-election. Mr Robinson has a history of making antisemitic comments as well.