Craig Cobb Update - mid-February 2014

Craig Cobb, armed white supremacist who terrorized Leith, N.D. has dropped below the radar of most news coverage in the past couple of months.  There have been developments.

White Supremacist armed with clubs in Leith

Cobb and Dutton, armed in Leith

more white supremacists, Leith

Cobb draped in ammo, in Leith

His buddy in roaming the town, where he was photographed threatening people with their guns, has rolled over on him and is ready to testify against him. Cobb is trying for a plea deal, offering to sell his property in Leith, and to leave, if they don't prosecute him.

The prosecuting attorney is negotiating a plea deal, but the deal he has offered Cobb doesn't satisfy the good residents of Leith.  They don't want the plea agreement; they want him behind bars.  As of February 10th, according to the Bismark Tribune:

Dressed in an orange jail suit with his gray hair neatly trimmed and his face clean shaven, Cobb barely had time to sit at his attorney’s table before South Central District Judge Gail Hagerty set Cobb’s case for trial and gave both sides three weeks to negotiate a plea deal.

The situation came to a head on Nov. 16, 2013, when Cobb and follower Kynan Dutton were arrested for carrying long-barreled weapons on an armed patrol of Leith and allegedly terrorizing citizens.

Dutton was released last month on a plea deal in which he promised to testify against Cobb in exchange for reduced charges and probation.

Grant County State’s Attorney Todd Schwarz said he would meet with Cobb’s alleged victims after the short hearing to see if he could get some consensus on an acceptable outcome.

He wouldn’t speculate on how much, if any, prison time would be in the deal.
Schwarz said it’s his job to protect the community and people where Cobb might go from here. He’s in jail in Stanton on $100,000 cash bond.

Schwarz said he’s heard that Cobb may deed his house and other property in Leith back to the city or someone else to whom he owes money.

“If he’s not coming back to Leith I would take that into consideration,” Schwarz said.
In fact, Leith Mayor Ryan Schock said Monday that Cobb has sold his two-story house in Leith to a resident of nearby Carson. The deal with James Kenneth Zimmerman, a mechanic, apparently included two of Cobb’s abandoned vehicles.

The new ownership doesn’t apply to other property Cobb still owns.
 
Three unrelated and abandoned properties that were condemned in Leith were burned last week. Cobb’s former home must be brought up to code with sewer and running water before it can be be occupied, according to the town’s new ordinances.

A handful of area residents attended the hearing and talked afterward in the courtroom lobby.

Judy Roth of Elgin, formerly of Leith, said she won’t be satisfied with less than a return to the way things were before Cobb started up in August, “not until every lot in town goes back,” she said.

Her sister Peggy Arndt of rural Flasher said she wants Cobb’s vision of a community of haters to end in Leith.

“It needs to stop someplace, or he’ll go on to the next town,” Arndt said.

Grant County Sheriff Steve Bay said the charges are serious and the residents truly felt terrorized.

“He shouldn’t get off scot-free. Not because it’s a high-profile case, but going back to what he did and the crime at hand,” the sheriff said.

Bay said Cobb has cost the county more than $20,000 in jail boarding fees and medical costs, and the state spent another $21,000 to enforce the law a peace rally across from Cobb’s house in September.

Schwarz said Dutton is prepared to tell a jury what was going on in Cobb’s mind when they picked up guns to patrol Leith and confront residents that cold weekend before Thanksgiving.

He said Cobb primed Dutton by lying about some vandalism to their Leith property. Cobb knew the vandal was actually another white supremacist who was living on his property and had called the police to have the unstable man removed, but hid that information from Dutton, Schwarz said.

Based on Cobb’s state of mind at the time, Schwarz said, he has no doubt there could have been gunfire had Cobb been provoked.

“He was very agitated,” Schwarz said.

The state’s attorney said there is one line he will draw in cement, not sand, on any plea deal.

“Those guns will not be returned to him,” he said.

I'm somewhat less impressed with the notion of Cobb not getting his guns back should be given such importance; guns are too easily available both legally and illegally; they can be replaced.  It was not only the brandishing of guns on this one specific occasion that was really the problem.  And the residents of Leith have a valid concern; white supremacist groups have indicated interests in doing the same thing in other locations.

The photos above are one face of the radical right, the face of those who might be categorized, to borrow a term from science fiction fandom, the 'drobes', short for wardrobe fandom, in this case radical right men and women who like to dress up in what they hope are scary uniforms, including weapons.

It is fair to say that these thugs in their outfits hold views not that different from the views expressed by Michael Dunn, who was recently convicted of crimes involved with shooting at 4 black teens, one of whom died.  It is fair to say that these obvious, over-the-top right wing extremists hold views consistent with the radical right militias, that they are not significantly different in those views from radical right groups  like the John Birch Society -- militia groups and the Birchers have had tables at the political convention of the MN GOP, for example, and have had a presence at national events like CPAC.  The John Birch Society, of course, was founded by the father of our modern Koch Brothers who seek to buy control of our government and governmental processes.  The White Supremacists, the militias, and other radical right groups draw heavily in their membership from our armed forces; one estimate from the DOJ places half their active members as having served and often been recruited in our armed forces.

These groups, and the people in the photos above, meet the classic definition of conservatives:

1. they believe things that are demonstrably not true - and don't care they are not true;
2. they position themselves as victims when they are not, using their faux-victim status to justify excesses and aggression, both legislative and physical;
3. they have a sort-of-Christian theology that is at the core to their politics and which they seek to impose on others;
4. they have an unmerited sense of superiority combined with paranoia;
5.  they are obsessed with weapons, and the justification for weapons to overthrow any governmental entity that does not conform to their beliefs, at every level of government.

Glenn Beck Betrays Himself

Glenn Beck is an ugly, nasty human being who personifies the intersection of right wing extremism, hypocrisy, ignorance, and hatefulness.  He is not so much ugly on the outside, although I find his smug, overemotional and pugnacious demeanor repellent; he is hideously ugly, on the inside, in his soul and in his character.

Glenn Beck has a Michele Bachmann-esque disregard for facts which is so severe as to be comical, if it were not for the venom that he spews.  It would be funny, if it were not for those on the right, the low-information non-fact-checkers who give him credence.  Thankfully, like Sarah Palin, Beck's popularity appears to have peaked and is on the decline, while his influence is diminished with his departure in disgrace from Fox News.  That disgrace is evidenced by the steady decline in viewership, and the mass exodus of advertisers.

Beck betrays his hideous flaws in thinking, and his hatefulness most recently in his comments that mentioned Nazi youth camps, while he ranted about the killings of children in Norway.

Beck knew nothing whatsoever about the activities or programs of the camp in Norway, when mentioning Nazi youth camps.  He still knows nothing about them despite claiming to be the victim for receiving criticism for his original comments.  He appears to be blissfully unaware, or utterly disinterested in the fact that it was the Labor Party in Norway which fought a brutal opposition to the Nazis.

Beck seems blissfully ignorant of the history of that opposition to the Nazis, and the opposition to the collaborators with them in Norway, the Nasjonal Samling, and of course, the 'Quislings'.  Or perhaps this is just one more instance where Beck conveniently ignores any fact which interferes with his position; Beck is a master at avoiding facts altogether.  The Nasjonal Samling promoted the same aggressively theocratic Christianity, factually false national history, and corporatism before and during WWII that Beck does now.  Like Beck and the Tea Party, the NS was rife with internal political dissension between factions of the movement, and was similarly polarizing. 

Gun Nuts on the Right: A Difference of Degree, Not of Kind

When I saw this on 60 Minutes on Sunday, May 15 2011, it struck me in the context of the ongoing push in the MN Legislature that these 'Sovereign Citizen' crazies reflected something in common with the right pushing for the new law expanding  when it is ok to shoot someone if they frighten you.

Because the right is inherently more frightened that someone will need shooting, need killing with a gun than everyone else is.  They see more occasions, more pretexts, where gun violence is appropriate, not less, and seek to institutionalize that rationale, despite Minnesota being one of the most peaceful, least violent states.

If this is true, that we are not a state prone to violence, then there is, by definition far less not more reason for expanding when it is acceptable to shoot someone else.  But if you think like the people profiled in this video, then there is always some danger that justifies or requires shooting, isn't there?  Including shooting people a majroity of your fellow citizens elected?  Because the right seems to have a preponderance of those who believe incorrectly that our 2nd Amendment rights are for shooting the people in our government...