'God is racist,' 'What’s wrong with being a racist?' NC candidate says
RALEIGH — A website tied to a candidate for the North Carolina General Assembly says God is a racist white supremacist and that Jews are descended from Satan.
Russell Walker is a Republican candidate running for state House District 48 which includes Scotland and Hoke counties.
On Tuesday, the North Carolina Republican Party withdrew its support for Walker.
“Based on recent behavior and previous statements, the North Carolina Republican Party is unable and unwilling to support the Republican nominated candidate for North Carolina House District 48," GOP chairman Robin Hayes said in a statement Tuesday. "The NCGOP along with our local parties in Hoke, Scotland and Robeson Counties will be spending our time and resources supporting Republican candidates that better reflect the values of our party.”
Walker did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
"What is wrong with being a white supremacist? God is a racist and a white supremacist," the website connected to Walker says.
"Someone or group has to be supreme and that group is the whites of the world ... someone or something has to be inferior ... In all history in sub-Saharan Africa, no two-story building or a waterproof boat was ever made."
Walker has authored multiple essays and other articles on the site and says it belongs to him.
In a 2016, letter to the editor in The Highlands Newspaper of Highlands, N.C., Russell Walker, 75, of Aberdeen, listed the website and said it was his. Walker owns a house in Aberdeen, according to public records.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said on Wednesday that the website belongs to Walker. The website domain is registered privately.
Walker has carried signs during a protest outside a North Carolina newspaper's office that said "What is wrong with being a racist" and "God is racist," the newspaper said.
Walker says on his campaign website that he is suing the Hoke County News-Journal newspaper “because they have refused to print any of my letters to the editor.”
In January, the editor of the paper, Ken MacDonald, wrote on the front page that Walker holds frequent protests outside the newspaper’s office holding up racist signs.
The website Walker says is his features racism, conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, including:
“God made the races and he is the greatest racist ever.”
“What is wrong with being a white supremacist?”
“The Jews are not Semitic they are Satanic as they all descend from Satan.”
A Facebook page for Russell Walker is the only account following the website's Facebook page.
Another post on the website refers to Martin Luther King Jr. by a racial slur. "MLK wanted to destroy the Caucasian race through mixing and integration. He was an agent of Satan.”
In a 2017 Spectrum News video of Walker following the dismissal of a lawsuit he filed to keep Confederate flags and portraits of Confederate generals in a South Carolina courtroom, Walker uses the same slur against King.
"The North Carolina Republican House Caucus and our members will not support Mr. Walker’s campaign given his comments and actions, said Rep. John Szoka, N.C. House Republican Caucus, conference chairman in a statement Wednesday. "While Mr. Walker won the Republican primary, his rhetoric and actions have no place in the Republican Party, and he should strongly consider withdrawing his candidacy."
On his campaign website, Walker says that he doesn't think it should be legal for people to be fired for "off-work comments or actions."
"What people do away from work is their business and not that of their employer," Walker wrote in his "economic development" section.
Walker had not stepped down as a candidate as of Wednesday afternoon, and cannot be forced off the November ballot.
He faces incumbent Democrat Garland Pierce, an African American minister, in November. In the Republican primary, Walker defeated John Imaratto with 824 votes, nearly 65 percent.
Walker says he is a chemical engineer and graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1964. He says on his campaign website that his license as a chemical engineer is “currently inactive.”
He also says he has gone to law school, visited all 50 states, about 40 foreign countries and six of the seven continents. He says he has been given an “A” rating by the National Rifle Association. Walker is “convinced that vaccinations, especially for young children, create a favorable climate for Autism,” according to his campaign website.
