(CNN) After the Michigan Republican Party faced severe backlash for using Holocaust imagery on its social media to oppose what it said were tougher gun proposals by Democrats, the state GOP party’s new chair is unapologetic. — in fact, he doubled down on the party. post.
“Government abuse of citizens has not only happened in the history of the world, but in the history of America,” Kristina Karamo, the first Black chair of the Michigan GOP wrote on Twitter protect the comparison. “We will not be silent as the Democratic Party, the party that fought to enslave Black Americans, and is now fighting to kill unborn children, tries to disarm us. Our 2nd Amendment put to protect us from those who seek to oppress.”
This is not the first time Karamo has made controversial and sometimes outlandish comments, which are almost too numerous to list in total, according to a CNN KFile review of his comments, mostly made in the past few years. year.
Karamo previously claimed that Beyoncé is secretly recruiting Black Americans to Paganism with a new album; that “demonic possession is real” and is transferred by “intimate relationship”; and that acceptance of gay and transgender Americans leads to acceptance of pedophilia.
He said the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement are “Marxist witches”; that the theory of evolution is “one of the biggest scams ever run over us in human history”; and that drugging is “witchcraft.” He compared abortion to pagan child sacrifice.
Earlier, Karamo also compared the media to Nazi Germany, saying that the media’s rhetoric about Republicans would lead to them being rounded up, killed and put in concentration camps.
A proud anti-vaxxer, Karamo also said he doesn’t believe in vaccines – saying he won’t vaccinate his children and only vaccinates himself.
After losing every statewide office and full control of state government for the first time in nearly 40 years, Michigan Republicans chose Karamo — who made these comments and more over the past few years — as their new state party chairwoman and the first. Black man to lead state party.
Karamo, an election denier who believes the 2020 presidential race was stolen, also refused to give up his own 2022 race for Michigan Secretary of State, which he lost by 14 percentage points – the most loss loss to any candidate in the state last year.
Before entering politics, Karamo worked as a community college professor and earned a master’s degree in Christian apologetics.
Karamo did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Here’s what the leader of the Republican party in the state of Michigan has to say on various issues.
In abortion
Karamo, who serves on the board of Michigan’s Right to Life organization and on the board of an anti-abortion pregnancy crisis center affiliate in Detroit, is staunchly opposed to abortion. He called abortion “child sacrifice” and a “satanic practice,” as CNN’s KFile previously reported.
“Abortion is nothing new. Child sacrifice is a satanic practice, and that’s exactly what abortion is. And we need to see it that way,” Karamo said in an October 2020 episode of his podcast “It’s Solid Food.”
“When people in other cultures, when they engage in child sacrifice, they don’t just sacrifice the child for bloodshed,” Karamo says later in the episode. “They sacrifice the child because they hope to have prosperity and that’s why people have abortions today. ‘Cause I’m not ready. I don’t want to have a child. I have time. I want to make money. I want my freedom.’ So you sacrifice the child hoping to get something out of their death, which is your freedom, your happiness, your prosperity.”
In another episode from July 2020, Karamo said that people have been sacrificing other people, including their own children, for “thousands of years, just wrapped differently.”
“[People] they are sacrificed to these gods, who are real demons,” he said.
In other media reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Karamo called abortion “the greatest crime in the history of our country.”
On transgender and gay Americans
Karamo has repeatedly attacked the LGBTQ community, accusing them of indoctrinating people with “sexual perversion” and likening the acceptance of transgender people to the normalization of pedophilia.
In a November 2020 episode of his podcast, he said the LGBTQ movement would “indoctrinate [people] with sexual perversion,” and that “pedophilia will be normalized.”
Karamo has unfoundedly connected transgender acceptance to pedophilia on several occasions.
“This is why people say that the whole transgenderism movement will lead to the normalization of pedophilia.” he said in an October 2020 podcast episode.
“Because if you say that children have the sexual autonomy to change their gender, then how can you reasonably say that they lack the sexual autonomy to have sex with an adult. You can’t, those things contradict each other, it’s not the same. It doesn’t make sense,” he added.
In the same episode, Karamo dismissed transgender identity as “a mental problem” and “ridiculous.”
On ‘demonic possession,’ paganism and Beyoncé
A devout Christian, Karamo frames most external things in his worldview as a direct result of “Satanism,” condemning everything from yoga (which he calls “satanic ritual”) to popular musicians to “bad” Democrats.
As first reported by the liberal watchdog Media Matters, Karamo baselessly accused music stars like Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Cardi B, Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish of being tools of Satan. He claimed that Beyoncé used an album to convert Black Americans to paganism; that Cardi B is a “tool of Lucifer because she peddles cultural filth”; and that Grande and Eilish put the children under “satanic deception.”
He also said that the “sexual revolution” is a “well-orchestrated plan of Satan.”
“And you can see his fingerprints all over it, all over it, about how well it’s organized and how effective it is in encouraging and pushing people to rebel against God, causing all kinds of harm. society and ultimately cause so many souls to perish in hell,” Karamo said in a September 2020 podcast.
Karamo also criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, calling it “nothing but Marxism and Satanism in blackface.”
In a September 2020 podcast, he claimed that Black Lives Matter leaders were “Marxist witches” and said, “It’s rooted in Pagan religion, and you’re channeling spirits and you’re doing satanic rituals. to finish your move.”
Karamo also believes that demonic possession is real, claiming that it can be transmitted through “intimate relationships.”
“If someone is possessed by a demon – I know it’s really crazy for me to say that for some people, thinking like what?!” Karamo said in September 2020. “But having a close relationship with people who are possessed by a demon or oppressed – I believe that a person opens themselves to possession. Demonic possession is real.”
Comparing the media to Nazi Germany and the ‘persecution’ of conservatives
An electoral denier supported by former President Donald Trump during his secretary of state race in 2022, Karamo made unsupported allegations about threats to conservatives.
In a podcast shortly after the 2020 election, Karamo criticized the mainstream media and claimed it promoted the jailing and killing of Trump supporters, comparing the media to Nazi Germany.
“The major news outlets are selling that you and I must die, we must be dead or put in camps. Because again, how else do you remove people from society? By killing them or putting them in camp? That’s it, there’s no other way to get people out of society. That’s why they’re calling for us to die or be put in camps, all because we support President Trump,” he said.
“Like I talked about earlier about Hitler. He got to that point. He didn’t just wake up one day and say ‘Okay, everybody, we’re going to round up all the Jews, put them in concentration camps, kill ’em.'” Karamo continued. “No, it was gradually step by step that it got to the point. And it started with what the people at MSNBC were doing.”
He predicted that if the court disputes over the election did not end for Trump, “lists” would be created to remove, imprison or kill Republicans.
“If things don’t go the way I hope they do through the courts for President Trump, it’s going to be hell,” Karamo said.
“They are calling for lists to be made. Tell me a Republican is calling for everyday Democrats and liberals and leftists to be put in camps or killed, removed from society, denied jobs, made the lists,” he added.
On vaccinations
Karamo also described himself as an “anti-vaxxer” and peddled false claims about vaccination.
In a podcast episode in July 2020, he said that he does not believe in vaccination and will not vaccinate his children. In a December 2020 episode, he said he had only been vaccinated once, in his childhood.
“I’m an unvaccinated person. I had – my mom gave me a vaccine when I was little,” Karamo said.
Karamo makes unsubstantiated claims that distinguish inoculation from vaccination. According to the definitions set out by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is almost no difference between the terms, which refer to the steps of the same process and can be used interchangeably.
As defined by the CDC, vaccination refers to the act of introducing a vaccine to produce protection from a disease; Vaccination, similar to inoculation, is the process by which a person can be protected against a disease by vaccination.
“The problem is not the concept of inoculation, which I fully support,” he said in the December 2020 episode.
Karamo also suggested the companies that make vaccines are not reliable, adding that “the issue is that these vaccines have a lot of additives and ingredients in there and they make a bunch of combo shots and we don’t know- what’s in these shots. giving us. It’s like, ‘Take it, shut up. Don’t ask.'”
Additionally, Karamo relayed a story about a woman who claimed that a vaccine caused her child’s autism and said that autism skyrocketed due to vaccine use. The idea that vaccines can cause autism has been repeatedly disproved by scientific studies.
