‘Black Nazi’ Mark Robinson’s Email Used to Sign Up for German Lessons on Duolingo

An email account used by North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, the self-proclaimed “Black Nazi” Republican running for the state governorship, was signed up to the language app Duolingo for German lessons, The Daily Beast has learned.

Robinson, who was revealed in a stunning CNN report Thursday to have posted on adult forums about his love of transgender porn and support for bringing back slavery, has indicated his affinity for Deutschland before — including in a 2012 post that said he preferred Adolf Hitler to Barack Obama for U.S. president.

“I’d take [Adolf] Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Washington right now!” he wrote on the forum “Nude Africa.” Robinson told CNN he denies posting the comments.

In addition to his apparent preference for Hitler over Obama, it appears Robinson, 56, may have also tried his hand at the Führer’s Sprache.

Using Epieos, a cybersecurity tool that lets users see if email addresses were used to register for dozens of websites, The Daily Beast was able to link an email address used by Robinson to a Duolingo account that bears his first name.

The email address prefix—that is, the part that comes before the @ symbol that’s followed by the domain—is “minisoldr,” the same handle CNN reported was used by him on pornographic forums where, between 2008 and 2012, he wrote “I’m a black NAZI,” called civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr. “worse than a maggot” and used an antisemitic slur.

The email address was also registered on Ashley Madison, the dating site for people looking to have affairs. Politico first reported that Robinson’s email had been used to sign up to the site. The Daily Beast independently confirmed that the email was contained in a breach of Ashley Madison data released by hackers in 2015.

Robinson’s campaign told Politico he did not set up the Ashley Madison account, but confirmed the email address belongs to him—they noted the email has “been compromised in multiple data breaches,” suggesting it could have been used by someone else to set up the account without his consent.

The Daily Beast confirmed that the email address has been leaked in at least nine data breaches, including in a breach of 360 million MySpace accounts that occurred in 2008, predating the Ashley Madison signup— and the hacker tried to sell the MySpace data eight years later.

Whether a result of dissatisfaction with Duolingo or a waning interest in the language of Goethe (and Joseph Goebbels), Robinson’s apparent learning experience on the language app was not especially fruitful. The account—registered to his email as an English speaker learning German—was created in August 2018 and has since earned only 329 experience points, or XP.

According to Duoplanet, a blog that covers Duolingo, a single lesson usually earns a user 10 XP, though that can reach up to 20 for major lessons. Lessons can take between five and twenty minutes, depending on the user’s pace and the difficulty.

That means the user spent, at most, a few hours learning German on the app.

And, in yet another German twist, an X user noticed that someone with the handle “minisoldr”—the same handle Robinson used on adult forums and other websites—submitted photos they took of toy models of Schutzstaffel (SS) soldiers to a website that showcases pictures of 1/6 scale military action figures. (The site manager did not reply to an email).

Robinson, his campaign manager, and his campaign spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.