The Consul Regent

Posted: 2024.09.22

On 19 September 2024, the Cable News Network (CNN) lynched North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson. In a hit piece published on its website, labeling Mr. Robinson “controversial and socially conservative,” CNN made the outlandish claim that Mr. Robinson, the republican party’s 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. The story went on to claim, incredulously, that Mr. Robinson also messaged that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, preferred former leader of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler over the Barack Obama administration, and he made derogatory and racial slurs directed at “Black, Jewish and Muslim people.”¹ The story is so over the top it resembles nothing that a normal person would say, particularly on a pornography website. The vernacular is odd and incoherent. Every part of the story seems out of place, seemingly designed, in this age of identity politics, to turn one identity group or other against Mr. Robinson. Evangelicals because no evangelical should frequent a pornography site, Jews because anyone who prefers Hitler to anything, even to Satan, must despise Jews, gays and transsexuals because the comments demonstrate hostility toward them, and blacks because anyone wishing the return of slavery, particularly a black person, must be anti-black and a self-hating one at that.

The incredulity of the story did not stop the mainstream press from running with it and spreading it far and wide as if it were an investigative coup a la Watergate, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigative masterpiece, although many of them were careful to credit the story to CNN and made it clear that they themselves had not independently verified the claims. The rapidity with which news of the story spread combined with the ferocity of the democrats’ response to it resulted in an existential crisis for Mr. Robinson’s heretofore successful gubernatorial campaign. Democrats and some of Mr. Robinson’s fellow republicans demanded that he withdraw from the race for governor. The deadline to withdraw was midnight Friday night, the day after CNN published the story. Mr. Robinson demurred.

What was Mr. Robinson’s crime? Why did CNN and his other tormentors feel he deserved to be destroyed? Sadly, because he is a black conservative republican. You see, among the intelligentsia along the coasts or in the black community in the United States, among the worst sins is to be black and a conservative republican. Each time a black conservative republican is ascendant, character assassination awaits him. The innuendos leveled at him and the savagery of the attacks are such as to leave no doubt to him (and to others in the arena) that there is a high price to be paid by those who dare to challenge the existing political order. One needs not look any further than the extreme vilification of United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to see the fate that awaits black conservatives in America. Justice Thomas is a man who would have been celebrated and lauded if he had been a democrat in conformation to the norm for a black person in America. But because of his conservative belief, he has been pilloried and made a caricature instead. A mere mention of his name in the black community evokes negative emotions, and the words, “Uncle Tom” inevitably follow. The liberal elites whose school he attended claim with a straight face, albeit insincerely, he is not bright and is nothing but a slave to Antonin Scalia, his former white ideological brother on the Supreme Court who was called home to be with the Lord much sooner than we mortals would have liked to see him go.

The traditional media’s and liberals’ fear, and indeed resentment, of black conservatives, particularly those who are farther to the right, demonstrates intolerance of what the former consider a transgression against the natural order and is reminiscent of how slave owners in 18th and 19th century America and politicians who represented their interests did everything in their power to keep slaves from being exposed to free, educated, blacks because the slaves seeing unrestrained, educated, and intelligent blacks might render those who are subjugated to reflect on their condition and inevitably burden their mind with thoughts that bondage and indeed inferiority were not their natural lot in life, as they had been made to believe, and that they were capable of learning and – through hard work, discipline, and determination – advancing in a way that could lead them to live meaningful lives.

America as a country has been blessed with good luck that Justice Thomas has been principled and unbending, and he possesses the strength to resist his detractors. As much as the mainstream media establishment has demonized him, depicted him as a crook, and parodied him, he remains unabashedly conservative and unapologetically Christian. He has helped produce by the Grace of God some of the greatest legal results that have come from the Supreme Court of the United States in recent memory. North Carolina, and indeed the citizens who care about her future, can only hope that Mr. Robinson possesses such fortitude and displays it in the coming weeks as he defeats the smear campaign against him. It is worth noting, however, that Mr. Robinson cannot do it alone. No more so than Justice Thomas could have withstood the assault of the democrats’ alone. Republican officials – national and state – must join forces with North Carolinians who abhor injustice to stand with Mr. Robinson and show the traditional media and the character assassins that their tactics will not work in this age of enlightenment.

Instead of asking Mr. Robinson to prove the salacious comments reported by CNN are not his, as U.S. Representative Richard Hudson did recently, republicans, including U.S. Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, need to support and defend Mr. Robinson and assail CNN for publishing a story that does not pass the smell test. Mr. Robinson cannot prove a negative. No man can. For a fellow republican to ask him to do that which is impossible is cowardice at best and idiocy at worst. Mr. Robinson is being assaulted for the same reasons that former President Trump is continually assaulted: the establishment sees them as threats and fears them. If one believes that Mr. Trump is being persecuted, then those of us who believe in fairness and justice must come to his aid and do everything possible to sustain him. The same holds true for Mr. Robinson. To abandon him at this hour is to abandon Mr. Trump and the cause for which Mr. Trump has sacrificed so much. If he should fall, Mr. Trump will have lost a determined and vocal defender.

As the great Martin Luther King said, “[t]he ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Let us all who believe in decency, fairness, and justice come together to give succor and strength to Mr. Robinson so that he may survive this lynching and thrive. Let us pray that he may become, by the Grace of God, the next governor of the great State of North Carolina. Any republican who through timidity or cowardice fails to support Mr. Robinson publicly and forcefully at this hour and carry him to victory in November should ask himself who will come to his aid when the establishment next turns its fire on him. Grow a backbone. Forget the polls. Lead public opinion instead of following it. Resolve to be the light that helps guide the voters of North Carolina through the darkness, to the end which the almighty has in store.

-The Consul Regent

¹https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics/kfile-mark-robinson-black-nazi-pro-slavery-porn-forum/index.html