Source: Salon
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson – well known for his homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, antisemitic, Islamophobic and racist social media posts and speeches – also appears to be in denial about the European role in destroying indigenous societies in the Americas, according to social media posts recently uncovered by Salon.
It’s a little surprising that Robinson, who attended college to become a history teacher (but has also called for the removal of history classes from schools), would write posts where he denies the historical reality of the genocide committed against Indigenous peoples by early European settlers and passionately defends Christopher Columbus and his role in the genocide.
According to Salon’s findings, in a series of posts beginning in 2015, Robinson complained about posts he saw from others describing a settler-colonial genocide in which a massive number of Indigenous peoples were forcefully assimilated, displaced or killed, calling them “ludicrous” and “VERY historically inaccurate.”
“It would seem that a Nation that is as blessed as we are would be too busy giving THANKS on Thanksgiving to have time to make silly memes and ludicrous posts about how we ‘killed the Indians,'” he wrote, calling anyone who would post such information an “IDIOT” and “INGRATE.”
Robinson didn’t explain in any of his posts where he got his information from, but we know that scientific and academic research suggests that European settlers – through disease, exposure, displacement, starvation and murder – were responsible for the deaths of more than 56 million Indigenous people in South, Central and North America between 1492 and 1600. An estimated 11 million Native Americans died between 1500 and 1900 from various causes, mostly from diseases brought by Europeans.
In addition to the millions of indigenous deaths, the colonization of this country resulted in a 99% reduction of Native American land in the present-day U.S.
In one of his posts, Robinson defended Columbus against the accusation that he was responsible for raping and murdering Indigenous people and destroying their societies. He mocked those who criticized Columbus as “People Who Can’t Cross Town Without A Cellphone, AC, And GPS” who could not compare in greatness to a man “Who Crossed The Ocean In A Wooden Boat With No Running Water And No Electricity.”
In a 2018 podcast interview, Robinson blamed the education system and colleges for teaching students about indigenous suffering and misleading them with “exaggerated claims” that “don’t teach our true history.”
He posted on social media that those who believe in the genocide of Native Americans should “go read a book.”
“Nothing cracks me up more than when someone who writes at a third grade level tries to ‘educate’ people about a history they don’t know themselves,” he wrote in 2016.
Robinson did not provide any recommended readings for helping people educate themselves about his view that there was no indigenous genocide in the Americas following the arrival of the first Europeans.
