A disturbing look inside Arkansas' "whites-only" community

I recently watched this disturbing half-hour video, Inside 'Return to the Land': The group making a whites-only community in Arkansas, which provides a glimpse into a "whites only" online-movement-turned-real-life-community called "Return to the Land" (RTTL), which is located on 160 acres deep in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas. Created by Sky News reporter Tom Cheshire, the video and the accompanying article explore the ethnonationalist movement that draws heavily on Nazi and white supremacist ideas — the group's public chat on Telegram, for example, includes references to "1488" and the "14 words," well-documented white supremacist numbers and slogans. The founder also states explicitly that they've "started a Whites only community" that he describes as a "fortress for the white race." Forty members currently live at the community they call "Return to the Land," and hundreds more folks across the world have paid to be members of the organization, many with the hopes to someday also move to the property in Arkansas.

In the video you can see the men in the community clearing land and building structures, while the women cook and serve food, clean, and homeschool and take care of children. Folks in the community use terms like "anti-white violence" and "European heritage," and one even makes the outlandish claim that "it's a loving movement." Folks are anti-CRT and pro-natalist, state that Hitler was "complex and multidimensional," and have a really hard time condemning the Holocaust.

In the accompanying article, Cheshire further describes the group:

[The group's leader, Eric] Orwoll insists what he is doing is entirely legal, because it is a private club and so exempt from equality legislation. Experts I spoke to doubt that.

But the group has invested tens of thousands of dollars in legal research and believes that it has created a viable framework for many more communities to come – both in the US and worldwide. Three other settlements are under way right now, all part of what Orwoll sees as a "path to power".

To join the group, you have to sign up to the Private Members Association, or PMA. Followers of "non-European religions", such as Islam, are banned. So are gay people. Anything that doesn't conform to what RTTL calls "traditional views" or "European ancestry".

Return to the Land is part of a growing white supremacist movement in the United States. According to the research and tracking group, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), which monitors violent conflict across the globe, there's been a rise in white supremacist incidents — including demonstrations, flyering, meetups, marches, and recruitment drives — over the last four years. And RTTL has close ties to one of the largest and most active white supremacist groups, Patriot Front. Group leader Orwoll isn't shy about his white supremacist views. Tom Cheshire explains:

Orwoll believes in the far-right conspiracy theory of "white genocide", that white people are being destroyed, deliberately, by mass immigration and cultural indoctrination. RTTL is his response to this.

And in the video, Orwoll is quoted, stating:

"Less than 50% of children born today in the US today are white. I'm white, my kids are white. There *is* something to your background that informs who you are, your sense of identity, and we don't want that sense of identity being taken away from us, involuntarily. So, we're taking control of that situation and creating an environment where my kids can celebrate their identity and not have it, you know, threatened from outside, I guess."

"We are forced to accept people into our neighborhoods, into our businesses, into our lives, who won't share our background, who won't share many of our cultural priors, even moral priors. We don't have a rule stating, you know, if you have X amount of non-European ancestry you're definitely out. But in many cases, yeah, that would disqualify someone."

"Why is it wrong to identify with your own people, to want an integrated culture where you be yourself?"

"As for excluding people I don't see it that way. We're trying to embrace our culture and our heritage. It's been denigrated, if you ask me, we've turned into a melting pot of a country, for a long time now."

For Orwoll, sadly, the community in Arkansas is just the beginning of his white supremacy fantasies and dreams, as he hopes more whites-only communities spread across the United States and internationally, and believes that social media is helping him create large networks and spread the word. He's no doubt correct, and, unfortunately, he and his ideologies are also getting a huge boost by the current adminstration, which, as The Hill puts it, is fighting "against diversity, equity and inclusion" and is seeking a "return to extreme racial exclusion, inequality and white supremacy."

Read Tom Cheshire's article, Whites Only: Inside the far right community excluding people on the basis of their race, which includes photos of the community and some of its member here, and watch the half-hour video, Inside 'Return to the Land': The group making a whites-only community in Arkansas, here.