A nationwide network of racist Ruby Ridges?
Return to the land, an openly racist and antiseptic movement with locations in Arkansas plans further expansion.
A group called Return to the Land, founded by Eric Orwoll and Peter Csere, has established two self-described “whites-only” residential communities in the Ozark hills of Arkansas.
Further expansion planned
The first, was founded on 160 acres in the Ozark hills near Ravenden, Arkansas in October 2023. It currently has over 400 hundred residents. The second, also in the Ozark hills of Arkansas in January 2025, according to the group's website (sorry, no link to racists, just search it). A third is planned in the Ozarks, near Springfield, Missouri.
The group plans further expansions: one in the Deep South and two in the Appalachians. All of which are allegedly in the initial planning phases.
What they are all about
These settlements explicitly exclude non-whites, Jewish people, non-Christians, and LGBTQ+ individuals, promoting what its founders call “traditional views and European ancestry.” The group’s reported motto, “No Blacks. No Jews. No Gays,” has ignited widespread condemnation for its overt racism, antisemitism, and homphobia.
Domestic versus international news coverage
While national news in the US has barely paid any attention to them, save this short online only piece by NBC news, they are garnering much more attention in more independent and targeted US publications: Forward, JFeed, and Atlanta Black Star, to name a few. Coverage abroad of this movement has been much more wide ranging from The Times of Israel to The Independent to The Times of India.
The most in-depth coverage, however, can be found in this excellent piece by Sky News in the UK.
According to this in-depth report: the 160-acre settlement, founded by Eric Orwoll, houses residents who describe it as a "fortress for the white race." Members undergo ethnic vetting through video interviews and can purchase land shares within the compound, which features residential cabins, communal facilities, and a homeschool.
The report continues, beyond housing the discrimination described above the settlement explicitly bans followers of "non-European religions" while actively incentivizing white population growth through cash rewards for newborns. The group recently awarded $1,000 to a family for having their sixth child.
This is one of the best interactive pieces I've seen in quite a while.
This focus on increasing white births has long been part of a nativist agenda to help offset the "great replacement theory" that they subscribe too, despite all evidence to contradict them from history. They cherry pick what they want. In their eyes, they have always been here and this is their promised land given to them by God and manifest destiny. Never mind the millions upon millions of Native Americans that were here when Columbus arrived with germs and guns. (See the book 1491 for more information about this bit.)
Avoiding civil rights lawsuits
According to The Atlanta Black Star report, the group is already deploying strategies to avoid lawsuits.
While they currently investigate legal protections that might protect them from civil rights and housing discrimination lawsuits and injunctions, they maintain its private association status without commercial aims shields if from civil rights laws. And they are raising money for attorneys that share these views, using online fundraising campaigns.
Just what do they mean by traditional?
The group is target at individuals and families with traditional views and European ancestry. They help groups of our members form European heritage communities. As covered above, this means whites only. The aim to "promote strong families with common ancestry" share their traditional values. So not only is the group racist, but they are also misogynistic.
To achieve these aims, they say they will refuse to lower their standards or lose sight of their goals. Their standards sound awfully a lot like racial purity tests. In fact on of the commenters on one of their fundraising campaigns practically begged for DNA testing for aspiring members. Never mind there is no such thing as purity.
They want to create many independent and fully-functioning parallel societies. In short, they want turn back there clock to the 1800s. I'd antebellum, but that would mean blacks would be near by, which they will not abide.
Connections to our recent history
If the focus on a separate society sounds familiar it should. It certainly calls to mind the 90s militia movement that metastasized in the wake of the stand-off at Ruby Ridge in Idaho (ed. note: again Idaho? really).
The militia movement was an explicitly right-wing movement that inherited paramilitary traditions of earlier groups, especially the conspiratorial, anti-government Posse Comitatus. The militia movement claimed that the groups were sanctioned by law but uncontrolled by government; in fact, they were designed to oppose a tyrannical government. Somehow, this opposition is nowhere to be found now.
No for the scary part, the movement's ideology has led to some truly atrocious successful and attempted criminal acts, including stockpiling illegal weapons and explosives and plotting to destroy buildings or assassinate public officials, as well as lesser confrontations. It was behind the Oklahoma City bombing, the attempted Olympic bombing in Atlanta, and the bombing of the Otherside lounge, a Lesbian bar also in Atlanta. Is this starting to rhyme yet for anyone else?
Many parts of the militia movement were explicitly tied to Christian nationalist. All the parts were inherently white and inverterately racist, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-semitic.
And it was violent as hell.
The danger of Return to the Land
Given our recent history in the US, a group of racist white people wanted to separate themselves from society invariably leads to first violence and then domestic terrorism
If Return to the the Land expands as they wish, can arming themselves be far behind (if hey haven't started already).
What we could be looking at is a regional network of Ruby Ridges and I doubt that our government now has the institutional will to try to stop that and may currently embrace it. By the time the wind turns, if it turns, it may already be too late.
Non in cautus futuri.
