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Craig Cobb Says He’s Found Another North Dakota Town He Wants to Turn All-White

White supremacist Craig Cobb just won’t give up on his idea of creating an all-white city in a remote corner of North Dakota.


Craig Cobb

First, it was the tiny community of Leith, and then it was Sherwood. Now, Cobb says he has set his sights on Antler, N.D., about 180 miles north of Leith and very close to the Canadian border.

In a Facebook posting this week, Cobb – who never seems to shy away from publicity – claimed he has 8,500 signatures on a petition supporting his plan to build a “Pioneer Little Europe” community in Antler. For some years now, white supremacists have fruitlessly attempted to create so-called PLEs, pictured as all-white enclaves lodged within a multicultural society.

“I think it's about time we listen to the people and make this PLE in Antler,” Cobb wrote. “If you think we're bad people you don't have to visit. Drive right by Antler, no harm no foul. I just want to live in peace.”

But then Cobb doesn’t always seem to stand by what he says. After he was arrested in 2013 for parading around with guns and terrorizing townsfolk in Leith, he told The Associated Press: “I’ll be glad to get out of the state, and I’ll never come back to North Dakota.”.

And in April of last year, Cobb said he planned to “retire from white nationalism” and ask the court for permission to move to Missouri to care for his ailing mother.

“I regret my actions. I know I was wrong and I accept responsibility for my actions. It was an unfortunate confluence of circumstances and bad decisions on my part,” Cobb told the court.

It seems as though he never lived up to that pledge and indeed never left the ranks of white supremacists.

Cobb told the Grand Forks Herald that he hopes to use an online funding site to raise about $70,000 for his initial property purchases in Antler, but that “crowdfunding” campaign hasn’t launched. So is all this hooplah just another Cobb publicity stunt?

“We'll just try, and hopefully we'll have some success,” Cobb told the Grand Forks newspaper, claiming he’s working as an agent for interested buyers he didn’t identify.

The mayor of Antler, Bruce Hanson, told the newspaper he hadn't yet heard of Cobb's intentions to buy property in the tiny community.

“It's all news to me," the mayor said. “I know there's property for sale in town here, but I hadn't heard about any property changing hands.”

In another Facebook posting, Cobb said his new effort to establish a PLE in Antler is “not about hate.” “I don't hate anyone, I'm being truthful,” he claimed. “I don't hate the ‘Children of Diversity,’ and I don't even hate the Marxists or the Zionists.

“We ‘rayciss bigots’ want to live with each other, we don't want to bother anyone,” Cobb wrote. “That's what we wanted to do in Leith, and there was no problem until you guys came along.”

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