The crazy shit from North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s past just won’t stop surfacing. Yesterday, we let you know about a 2019 video in which Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor, told women they should “keep their skirt down” if they don’t want to get pregnant.
Ah, but the weekend brought another excavation of the rightwing candidate’s long history of endorsing conspiracy theories, as the Daily Mail tabloid discovered old audio of a 2018 interview on a rightwing evangelical talk show in which Robinson readily agreed with the host’s contention that Franklin D. Roosevelt helped Japan attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, and also supported the notion that the USA assassinated Gen. George Patton in late 1945, all to help the USSR in the Cold War.
Those are both very old, very nutty conspiracy theories I believe I first heard about back in high school in the late 1970s, before anyone even used the term “conspiracy theory,” and you still had to use microfiche and old magazines to research important issues like whether Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike.
For a change, Robinson wasn’t the one to bring up the crazy all on his own, although once Chris Levels, host of the “Politics and Prophecy” radio show, mentioned them, Robinson was all in, and happily added his own speculation about FDR’s nefarious work on behalf of Josef Stalin. Here’s a link to the audio, but it’s some weird format that doesn’t let you pause or fast forward, so you’d have to listen to the whole awful mess.
Levels said there’s something really fishy about how US involvement in WWII played out, noting that “Japan is the one who bombed us, but the most of our materiel, and effort went to Europe.”
Robinson agreed:
“Right. It really calls to question the motives and the suspicion around our entire introduction into the war, it really does. […] It raises serious questions.”
It doesn’t, really, not if you know anything about history, but “knowing things” is bad news for conspiracy theories. In the years leading up to December 7, 1941, the US had been steadily ramping up its support for Great Britain, providing arms and supplies through the Lend-Lease program, and German U-boats had been attacking US military and cargo ships for much of 1941 already.
Plus, there’s the little detail that four days after Pearl Harbor and FDR’s declaration of war on Imperial Japan, Germany backed up its ally and declared war on the US, a detail that neither Levels nor Robinson seem to have brought up.
Robinson initially said, “you know, I’m not prepared to say our government intentionally set Pearl Harbor up. I know there’s a lot of conspiracy theories that say that …”
At that point, Levels eagerly jumped in, prompting Robinson to warm up to the topic too:
LEVELS: I will! There’s too much proof!
ROBINSON: Definitely. There’s definitely questions that are out there, serious questions that have been raised.
Did it get stupider? Well of course it did! This bullshit is straight out of old John Birch Society beliefs about the war, which posited that if FDR had really been serious about peace, he’d have followed up the victory over Nazi Germany by immediately attacking the USSR and defeating Stalin, which the Nazis had already tried and failed to do. Woulda been EASY for us, though.
The only explanation, Robinson said, was that Roosevelt was backing Stalin from the start:
When you take a look at the totality of it, and look at the way FDR completely disregarded the fight in Japan and focused all of his energy, all of his energy was focused on a way for us to get to Europe, and not just to get to Europe, but to get over there to help the guy he called Uncle Joe.
So wait a minute, we went to the Europe, and we “freed Europe from the Nazis,” but then we turned right around and turned over even more property to the communists. That doesn’t make any sense!
It will no doubt be a surprise to the Americans who served in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945 that all of America’s efforts were focused on Europe. Kind of hard to say Roosevelt was ignoring the Pacific when you consider that within six months of the Pearl Harbor attack, the US was already on the offensive in the Pacific, with the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, followed by Midway Island the following month. Four of the six aircraft carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor were destroyed at Midway.
Not that facts matter too much when you’re pushing a conspiracy theory. We can at least be glad that neither Levels nor Robinson openly griped that the US should have supported Hitler in fighting communism (the Jews), or called FDR “Rosenfeld,” popular tropes with fascist sympathizers going back to WWII and after, and still big with neo-Nazis today.
Also in the interview, Levels contended that the US probably assassinated Gen. George S. Patton because he supported following V-E Day with a whole new war with the USSR. In mere reality, Patton was paralyzed in a car accident in December 1945 and died two weeks later, but what if Harry Truman had him killed? It’s another popular bullshit theory on the Right, so of course it must be true:
‘I’m not ready to say it for sure, but it sure looks like it because Patton was a rabid dog when it came to that communism thing,’ Robinson responded. […]
‘How this guy ended up getting killed in a “car wreck,” I’ll never know,’ Robinson said.
‘I certainly don’t believe it. It’s just too fishy to me,’ Robinson said of his death being the result of the accident.
Robinson also called FDR a ‘quasi-socialist or a complete socialist that was surrounded by communists’ who went to Europe with the ‘intent of saving Joseph Stalin, saving communism and saving Marxism.’
A huge 6X6 2.5 ton cargo truck made a sudden turn — without signaling, in front of Patton’s limo — because the truck driver was an inattentive idiot. Cars didn’t have seatbelts then. Others in Patton’s car survived, which suggests the collision was far from a sure thing as assassinations go.
Robinson comms director Mike Lonergan dismissed the Daily Mail article as “just more twisted word-game pretzels made up by Democrats and their allies in the press to falsely attack Mark Robinson,” which may be the first time we’ve seen the usually right-leaning tabloid described as an ally of Democrats. Besides, said Lonergan, hadn’t Robinson said he wasn’t prepared to fully support the crazy theories before he said real history was too fishy to believe?
He’s not weird, you’re weird, the end.
[Daily Mail / Photo: Library of Congress]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid member! Or if you’d like to make a one-time donation, this link will protect your cash from falling into the hands of the Trilateral Commission or the Bavarian Illuminati.
So Roosevelt orchestrated the assassination of Patton nearly eight months after his own death? Impressive!
Honestly, the major feature of the last 40 years of American politics has been the mainstreaming of Bircherism.
As a reminder, at the time, the United States had placed sanctions on Japan over their mistreatment of China and Korea. These sanctions had restricted Japan's oil supply, which gave them two options: 1) either stop being a bunch of assholes, or 2) expand their wars to include the United States. They chose option 2, and struck a strategically important military base the United States was using to project their naval power.
None of this is controversial. Given Japan's dumbass fascist perspective at the time, it even kind of makes sense.