Members have espoused racist and antisemitic views and repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. They’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their movement is growing.
www.wired.com
A group of Americans are building a “
whites only” community in rural Arkansas they call the Return to the Land. They believe that white people and Western culture are facing extinction due to an influx of
immigrants and minorities, and according to the group’s founder, access to the community is open only to people of white European ancestry who share common views on topics such as segregation, abortion, and
gender identity.
Video footage shared by the group on its social media accounts show a bucolic setting with animals and children running around their 160-acre site, while members of the community build timber-frame homes, churches, and other facilities. A “few dozen” people are already living there full time, says Eric Orwoll, the group’s president.
Though the organization claims that Return to the Land is nothing more than a peaceful settlement of like-minded people, the online histories of the group’s leaders tell a different story. Members have espoused virulently racist and antisemitic views and repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. One of the leaders says he is currently under criminal investigation in Ecuador. Orwoll himself has spoken about the coming of a second Hitler and praised KKK leader David Duke. He is also closely aligned to an international network of far-right influencers, extremists, and white supremacists, including Thomas Sewell, a neo-Nazi living in Australia who was the founder of a group that influenced the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter.
Despite this, the Return to the Land community has been lauded by far-right influencers and has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.
Return to the Land, which was first reported on by
The Forward and
Sky News, is actively scouting for other locations to create a network of similar communities across the country, with a development in Missouri apparently in the works. Inspired in part by the Silicon Valley-based concept of the “
network state” and by a white separatist community in South Africa
known as Orania, the group promotes itself on its website as a community designed to “promote strong families with common ancestry, and raise the next generation in an environment that reflects our traditional values.”