Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Failure of "Cobbsville" Part IV: In the End, It's Not Really About Cobb


Since the last post on the subject a few things have happened. Cobb and Dutton were denied bond. Cobb began a hunger strike (he was taken to the hospital today for an evaluation). He has filed a human rights complaint against the attorney general of North Dakota claiming he has been discriminated against. Finally, Cobb has promised that, in exchange for dropping charges against him, he will leave North Dakota forever.

All in all it's been a busy week and a half for Cobb and his friends.

We had stated in an earlier post that we really didn't expect much out of Cobb's efforts and that it would inevitably collapse around him. Despite the initial hopes of his supporters, even most of them have come to realize how disastrous this initiative was. His detractors on VNN and Stormfront have been ripping into Cobb and his allies on the White Nations forum have been at a bit of a loss to explain how things have turned out, suggesting that Cobb might be mentally ill or suffering from dementia.

But really, whether Cobb had initiated this effort or someone else, it was going to fail because of who it attracted. In fact this case really is a shining example of what the, "White Nationalist" or "White Separatist" movement really is all about. In that sense Cobb is a bit player in the drama he created.

Let's take a look at the two adults who have stuck it out with Cobb to support our case:



This is Kynan Dutton. Currently in jail with Cobb on charges of terrorizing the citizens of Leith, he initially got himself into trouble because of a drunken rant during a council meeting. At the time some of the people who supported Cobb's efforts had tried to explain that Dutton was simply frustrated and under stress and, combined with alcohol, acted uncharacteristically.

Fair enough.

So with that in mind we present an example of how a presumably sober Kynan Dutton is able to interact with the public:


The other person, Kynan's partner Deborah, had actually left Leith for a brief period of time after Kynan's outburst during the council meeting. She had gone to her new neighbors in Leith pleading for help as she had no gas money to leave. The good people of Leith did as good people in small communities often do They gathered enough money so Deborah and her three children could leave the village and go back home.

She just couldn't stay away though.

A few weeks later Deborah was back and, in exchange for the kindness shown to her by the people of Leith, Deborah reciprocated with this: 


Hard to believe that people aren't all that fond of her either.

But even those supporters who didn't move themselves are as much a part of the problem. Take the guy who founded and runs White Nations. He rails against people of color, Jews, and others using the nastiest racial epithets while claiming that these groups are genetically criminal....

 

and yet....


Yeah, he's a convicted sex offender.

We won't post all the screenshots that we have detailing the misanthropy of Cobb's supporters simply because there is so much of it out there already.

"Cobbsville" was going to fail due to the character flaws of the, "White Nationalist" movement members who celebrated it. The effort could only fail because ultimately these people, delusional as they are about being on the vanguard of a new movement, simple can not function around human beings no matter the ethnicity of the people they might find themselves living next to.

Still, even someone as delusional as Craig Cobb began to see the writing on the wall not long before his arrest:


Cobb in this screen shot hat seemed to have given up any chance that his initiative would be successful and instead appears to have started to view it as a self-promotional tool (not that this wasn't already a part of his agenda).  This was further evidenced by his decision to poison the well even further with plans for new incendiary signage:


This seemed to have been even too much for his biggest booster the convicted sex offender:


So Craig considered what "Fred" had to say and decided that he would act in a more civil manner, right?

Please! This is Craig Cobb we're writing about. The following signs were up the next day:


How did his supporters respond?


When he received notice compelling him to upgrade his home or face having it condemned....


.... his supporters actually tried to offer him some ideas to get things up to code.

Cobb's response was essentially to tell them all to screw off.


Cobb's recalcitrance resulted in the following observation on his old stomping grounds:


But really, by this point Cobb was more interested in media appearances anyways, exasperating his supporters further:


But the final straw came after the arrest as his supporters tried to come up with some sort of defence, unhinged though those plans might have been:


 

But to show how desperate they really are, here's the response when it is suggested that maybe they cut Cobb loose:


That might be the most telling part of the exchange. They've come to terms that Cobb isn't stable and is more trouble than he's worth. But since there are so few of them, they have to continue to support him.

If that doesn't say something about the state of their movement, then we don't know what does.

But people have started to abandon Cobb. Nary a word from the National Socialist Movement who had, in September, rallied in Leith in support of Cobb. Canada's own Paul Fromm, who had been supportive of Cobb when he lost his job and urged supporters to contact Cobb's former employer to complain, has been silent. And Terrible Tommy has disavowed Cobb's plans for Leith.

And really, when Tom Metzger thinks you've gone too far, you really have gone too far.

In summation, a VNN poster provides his take on the whole mess:

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