LISTEN: Residents defend Minnesota councilman after he's caught liking racist posts about 'Mexicans and Muslims'

Supporters and critics of a Minnesota city councilman spoke Monday night during a meeting to address his racist online activity.

Willmar City Council member Ron Christianson on Facebook "liked" a number of racist sentiments, according to West Central Tribune.

Ben Larson, a member of the city's Human Rights Commission, said during the meeting that Christianson should denounce the posts rather than like them.

"He shouldn't be a leader if he really believes those things," Larson said.

But some residents of Willmar voiced their support for Christianson and the posts he liked, West Central Tribune reported.

"I'm tired of the Somalis too. They've taken over the whole damn town... You guys need to take your blinders off," resident Joe Fernkes said.

The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has previously called for hate crime charges to be filed against Fernkes. He allegedly berated a Somali-American selling vegetables and threw a pig's foot at him in August.

Another resident, Bob Skor, insisted that Christianson was just a proud American -- not a racist.

"Everybody has their opinion, but we can't agree to disagree and that is a problem," he remarked. Skor also referred to the city as "Little Mogadishu."

Resident Edward Peterson also defended Christianson and accused Larson of being a Democrat.

One of the posts that Christianson liked read: “We need to get these people out of our country and back to other Muslim hell holes where they will fit in because they don’t fit in here and never will.”

He also liked another post that stated: “Now we are flooded with illiterate Mexicans and Muslims. These people have exceedingly low IQs and bring diseases, crime and filth into our country that our forefathers sacrificed so much for. Is that our fate to end up with no longer a culture worth a damn just a bunch of mongrels gnawing on a bone?”

Listen to audio of Fernkes, courtesy of WillmarRadio.com, below: