“Welcome to Leith” – if you’re white [MOVIE REVIEW]
“Welcome to Leith,” the outstanding new documentary directed by Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker, tells the compelling and horrifying story of the attempted take-over of a dying town by one of the country’s most notorious white supremacists, Craig Cobb. That he failed is a tribute to the courage and ingenuity of its last remaining residents.
The town of Leith, North Dakota, founded in 1910, was the tiny hub that joined two local North Dakota rail lines. The railroad was abandoned in 1984 and the town began to shrivel up because no highways came anywhere close, eliminating viable transport of any significant amount of agriculture from the small farms dotting the countryside and eliminating the possibility of any industry moving in. The population soon dwindled to 24 and those who worked had to find employment elsewhere. Still, those who remained were devoted to their small community.
Craig Cobb, an outsider, arrived one day and began to buy up abandoned property, a source of income that most of the residents initially welcomed. But then news arrived from a disturbing source. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), this country’s leading resource in the fight against racism and home-grown extremism, contacted the town leaders to inform them that Cobb, a prominent white nationalist, was on their tracking list of dangerous individuals. Outed, Cobb stepped up his campaign making it clear that in his Leith, there would be no room for the one African American resident. He soon had a disciple in Kynan Dutton and his girlfriend, both answering the call from Oregon. He deeded several of his properties to other white supremacists, including Tom Metzger, founder of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and invited others to join him.
An interesting and equally horrifying side note in all of this is the memory that Tom Metzger, already the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in California in 1979, cleverly and legally maneuvered himself into mainstream Democratic circles to the extent that he successfully became the Democratic Congressional candidate for the Northern San Diego district in 1980.
The film goes into great detail about the various Nazi and hate groups benefiting from Cobb’s largess and their ultimate plans to turn Leith into an Aryan Nation-controlled village welcoming racists from throughout North America. Leith had great appeal as it appeared that the small naïve and native population would concede defeat as quickly as Austria did to Germany prior to World War II. But more importantly, it was close enough to the oil fields of booming North Dakota that the influx of new residents would find employment at incomes exceeding $50,000 per year. Free land, work and a controlled white population… what downside could there possibly be?
But the residents of Leith, made aware of the danger by the SPLC, rallied and, knowing that their limited numbers were a huge disadvantage, enlisted the help of their neighbors to counteract the political maneuvers being exercised by Cobb. Frighteningly, and the crux to the drama and tension, is that everything Cobb did was legal and remains legal making “Welcome to Leith” play like the ongoing thriller it is.
That your stomach will never unclench is a tribute to how these filmmakers frame this story to show the continuing dangers posed by these groups and the ingenious ways in which they target the weak in order to build up their fortresses. Do not miss this true-life thriller.
Opening Friday November 6 at the Laemmle Music Hall.