SXSW Movie Review: Welcome To Leith

By Brad Henderson

If you’re an actual human being with dignity, you already know racism is a terrible thing. Well, if you’re racist against racists then I guess that’s OK. . . or stupid people. Hell, I’m a racist then.

We all know it exists but I think the world is unfamiliar with how bad it is sometimes. The news doesn’t broadcast a lot of these kinds of things. One person I think people are definitely unfamiliar with is Craig Cobb. I’d heard of Cobb before seeing Welcome To Leith, but this film showed me who Cobb really is. A lot of words come to mind trying to describe Cobb, but to put it simply: he’s a fucking racist. A big one.

Welcome To Leith is a documentary about Craig Cobb basically trying to take over a town in North Dakota a few years ago by buying land and trying to get all his white power followers to move there. Honestly, I don’t think this would ever work but he did try to attempt it and that’s the scary and disgusting part. Welcome To Leith is a penetrating documentary about Craig Cobb, but more importantly, the townspeople of Leith. It was filmed over the course of a couple of years and goes into detail on how the townspeople tried to prevent Cobb from doing what he wanted. It also shows how Cobb operates and thinks which I thought was more interesting than his actual attempt at a takeover.

Welcome To Leith shows you the people that monitor these racist organizations. It also shows a little bit about how underground racism operates and the kinds of things they do. It gives you a quick look at the support Craig Cobb gets from people with small amounts of power. He is simply a racist city boy who plays it smart and doesn’t do anything extreme. I know it sounds odd to use the word “extreme” but he doesn’t do anything obviously crazy. He is clearly intelligent, doing things mostly by the book in order to stay on the right side of the law and out of trouble. Still, these are the reason why he couldn’t mobilize enough people to create his dream white power town.

Even though Craig Cobb has tons of followers and runs one of the biggest white power forums on the Internet, this documentary shows that he isn’t all that powerful and is merely a professional dreamer. That makes me happy. Even though the filmmakers aren’t racists (well, I don’t think so anyway), Cobb lets them get up close and personal on a level that I wouldn’t have expected. You would think that Cobb would not want to show himself and his actions so intimately, but he is all for it. Apparently he is all about the exposure.

Welcome To Leith is one of the more interesting docs that I’ve seen because it doesn’t feel biased and oddly enough, there is some comedy present. I don’t find racism funny, but you have to attack it with a certain sense of humor because if you don’t you’ll be angry and depressed. You have to approach Welcome To Leith with the desire to be entertained and not go in thinking it will make you angry. I know that sounds weird but that’s how I approach all forms of racism. I just think it’s absolutely ridiculous how many people have this racist mindset.

At this point I’m probably on some white power watch list, but that’s fine. I’m excited for the world to see Welcome To Leith and expose Craig Cobb for who he really is as well as the world that he lives in and the people who support him. It’s not often you see a documentary address the subject of racism with such tact, trying to show both sides of the story without agreeing with either one of them.

At the time of its screening Craig Cobb had not yet seen the film. I would like to know his thoughts about how he comes across in the film. It’s interesting to see a documentary that doesn’t try to make a racist look like a total ass . They end up doing that to themselves and the camera just captures it. Welcome To Leith is an extremely important documentary because it will make people aware of the bullshit that isn’t publicized on a regular basis. The news would rather focus on death and destruction instead of the backbone it takes to make a movie like this.