Welcome to Leith

Welcome to Leith was well-received at its showing at Austin's SXSW Film Festival. The film documents the peculiar events that occurred in 2013-2014 when a nationally-known white supremacist Craig Cobb moves to tiny Leith, North Dakota (population: 24) with a plan to buy up land and take over city government and make it into some sort of center of white supremacy. Once alerted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) the ordinary town folks mobilize to fight back and save their town from Cobb's nefarious plan.

The odd part of the story is that Cobb's plan seems to be legal. (When he and his partner are finally arrested they almost seem to have been provoked.) There is nothing illegal about buying land and moving into a town. And the first amendment allows him to express his beliefs and fly his Nazi flags no matter how evil and offensive those beliefs may be. The town residents actually seemed to be making excuses to get rid of him such as citing him for not having running water and a sewage system on his property.

Fundamentally, the film asks the question is democracy about the community making decisions by the will of the majority or is there a basic set of minimum beliefs about human equality that are necessary prerequisites to participate in democratic society? The majority of the town seemed to decide – really quite reasonably - that Cobb's noxious beliefs were so anti-egalitarian that they didn't want him and his cronies to live in their town. They are in some sense intolerant of his intolerant beliefs, but one can hardly blame them.

Welcome to Leith is beautifully filmed and the filmmakers maintain an impressive level of objectivity about their offensive subject. They let his evil beliefs discredit themselves rather than trying to paint Cobb as anything more than the pathetic nasty creature that he is. The townspeople come off as genuine and human. Perhaps it is a positive sign that this sort of racism is unacceptable even in one of the smallest most isolated corners of the United States. I hope that Welcome to Leith gets widely distributed so that many more people can enjoy this powerful film.

Excellent film, thoroughly enjoyed it. The stories including the neo nazis and people resisting was so fascinating!

This is the documentary about the inhabitants of Leith, a small village/town in North Dakota. After finding out that Craig Cobb, a well known and infamous neo nazi are buying as much land as he possibly can in order to create some sort of village for his like minded, mentally challenged people aka other neo nazis. Basically, Cobb is trying to take over Leith.

It starts off pretty calmly, but after a while Cobb and his minions start to walk "patrols" in this small community while being armed with assault rifles and things escalate quicky. The movie is not only a testament to how hard the residents of Leith fought to get rid of a potentially dangerous group of individuals but it also gives a glimpse inside the narrow mind of Cobb and his followers. Why they would let themselves be portrayed like this for the world to see is beyond me, but in my experience alt-righters and neo nazis aren't very intelligent to begin with. If you haven't watched this, i recommend it strongly.

The negative reviews comes from deplorables who's afraid and/or ashamed of the truth. This movie is extremely well made, it's unbiased and we get to see both sides of the situation.

I wish that this wasn't a documentary.

The movie overall is extremely gripping and entertaining and well-put together. The content is horrible, and I wish that the events shown in it had never happened. This has little to do with my enjoyment of the film, however. The movie was well-put together and I liked seeing all the perspectives. It seemed like the filmmakers were trying to get the audience to sympathize with the nazis, but other than that I enjoyed this movie.

This documentary speaks volumes and is very relevant to America in 2016-2018 with what is happening in the news.

This should be shown in every school to help fight hatred and learn how to stand up to them. Kudos to the producers for making such an important piece and getting it out there