With exclusive access, the feature documentary THE QUIET PART chronicles the infiltration of a pagan white supremacist group in a rural American town through the eyes of residents who oppose them, and others who defend them. But what begins as passionate resistance, transforms into passive habituation as the group’s “good neighbor” strategy seduces some and resigns others to give up on community solidarity.
In the summer of 2020, a pagan white supremacist group (name withheld out of safety concerns) buys an old church building in a tiny farming town in the Midwest. They soon remove the cross and turn it into a hof (gathering hall). Labeled an official hate group by extremism experts, their explicit goal – preserving and propagating white families – is couched in an invitation to find belonging in Norse paganism. Although this hof is only their third, they have started 31 chapters in the U.S. – 16 since 2020 – and more in Europe, New Zealand and South Africa.
The film follows an interracial family in this majority white town who must now deliberate how to safely raise their children within the looming shadow of this white supremacist group. Through their eyes, THE QUIET PART examines how this town’s piecemeal decisions result in the normalization of extremist ideology and overt racism – provoking audiences to consider our own complicity in assimilating to cultures of violence.
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