Tucked away in a small Arkansas town, gravel roads wind through a patchwork of newly built cabins. Families are beginning to move in, working the land and setting up homes in what looks, at first glance, like a typical back-to-the-land experiment.
Look closer, though, and a different picture emerges. The community, called Return to the Land, doesn’t welcome everyone: Membership is limited to white people, with LGBTQ+ applicants barred outright.
Civil rights groups argue that the separatist settlement is illegal, prompting a review by Arkansas’s attorney general. Meanwhile, experts and national advocates warn it signals a broader effort to rebrand extremist ideology for the mainstream.
“The idea that it’s called ‘Return to the Land’ reflects a fantastical, backwards-looking utopian nostalgia for a world in which white men were always in power and everyone else served their needs,” says sociologist Cynthia Miller-Idriss, author of Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism. “These ideas are dangerous, and it’s a quick leap from these kinds of fantasies to violence against immigrants, people of color, and LGBTQ+ communities.”
Here’s an inside look at the project — and what experts say it reveals about today’s political climate.
Who’s behind this all-white community?
The founders of Return to the Land have come under intense scrutiny for their pasts — and for good reason.
The group’s president, Eric Orwoll, used to make money by performing in livestreamed sex videos with his then-wife, Caitlyn, who now lives on the property with their four children. In an interview with The New York Times, Orwoll said he wasn’t a Christian at the time and has since denounced pornography, calling it an addiction that he believes has “emasculated” young men.
The compound’s other founder and secretary, Peter Csere, has drawn his own share of controversies. He was arrested in Ecuador in connection with the stabbing of a local miner — an incident he claims was self-defense which remains under investigation.
Csere has also faced financial allegations from a vegan ecovillage where he once lived, whose former members claim he left owing $29,000 and stole another $30,000 in cryptocurrency. Csere disputes those accusations, telling WIRED that “various owners of that former community owed me large amounts of money and did not pay it back.” He added that he has been blocked from selling land he still owns there.
Both men have ties to white supremacist circles and have promoted neo-Nazi views. Last year, Orwoll appeared as a “VIP” guest at the America First Political Action Conference, a white nationalist gathering led by Nick Fuentes. Csere, meanwhile, has downplayed the Holocaust: In a post on X, he recast the conversation to claim the genocide “didn’t happen” — before adding that he would “like to talk about how it should have.”
Where is Return to the Land located?
The 160-acre compound is located in Ravenden, Arkansas — a rural town of about 400 people, where the nearest grocery store is a 30-minute drive. A few dozen residents, including families with children, have already moved in, and Orwoll says he hopes to eventually grow the community to around 200.
Despite being the group’s figurehead, Orwoll doesn’t actually live on the property yet. He says his homestead isn’t ready for his wife and four children, though he has a house just 15 minutes away and is “working toward moving into the community.” For now, he keeps an office there — an insulated shed with air-conditioning, fiber internet, two pianos, and shelves of books, including Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the manifesto that spread his racist ideology and laid the groundwork for the Holocaust. Csere also isn’t known to live on the compound, focusing instead on legal and organizational work behind the scenes.
On the ground, the community is just beginning to take shape. The property is a patchwork of gravel roads, self-built homes, and scattered chicken coops. Some houses already run on solar panels and generators, with septic and water systems in place. More developments are on the horizon: The group’s website lists five additional and upcoming projects — two elsewhere in the Ozarks, one in the Deep South, and two in the Appalachians. Orwoll told The New York Times he also plans to scout potential land in Missouri. He has said his vision was inspired in part by Orania, a whites-only town in South Africa established at the end of apartheid and reserved for Afrikaners — a settlement the South African government has largely ignored.
What are the qualifications to join the community?
The admissions process begins with a questionnaire designed to screen for “European heritage” and exclude anyone who “doesn’t present as white.” On social media, the group frames its mission as creating “communities for their own people,” but experts say that premise rests on false and overly simplistic notions of race.
“They’re tapping into this idea of displacement — the belief that white people lack a homeland,” says Peter Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University who has studied extremist groups and violence for more than 25 years. “But racial categories don’t actually make sense. Scientifically, human biology is far more complex than the rigid divisions they’re trying to draw.”
Membership restrictions go further: The group bars Jewish applicants and gay people of any race. Beyond ancestry, applicants are subject to an ideological litmus test, with questions about immigration, “transgenderism,” Covid-19 vaccines, and even segregation. One prompt on the application, WIRED noted, asks: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?” with options ranging from “every day” to “never.”
Passing this initial vetting grants access to private chats on Telegram, a messaging app known for its encryption and privacy features. Orwoll claims “hundreds” have already signed up, each paying a one-time $25 fee. Those who want to relocate to Arkansas face a more rigorous screening process, though beyond a background check, the details remain unclear.
Is this development even legal?
Return to the Land operates as a “private membership association” — a structure its president, Orwoll, argues shields the group from legal challenges. Still, the group has solicited $63,000 from supporters to fund what it describes as “legal framework research.”
ReNika Moore, director of the racial justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union, sees it differently. She argues that excluding applicants based on race clearly violates the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which bars housing discrimination based on race or religion. “Repackaging residential segregation as a ‘private club’ is still a textbook violation of federal law,” she told The New York Times.
Other civil rights organizations have joined in, condemning Return to the Land and pressing local and federal authorities to shut down the project. “We urge the Arkansas Fair Housing Commission, local elected officials, and law enforcement to act swiftly to ensure that Northeast Arkansas remains a welcoming and inclusive community, not a refuge for intolerance and exclusion,” Lindsay Baach Friedmann, a regional director at the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in part on a statement posted on X.
Adding to the scrutiny, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has opened an investigation into possible legal violations by Return to the Land after coverage in The Forward and Sky News earlier this summer. His communications director, Jeff LeMaster, told us, “We are continuing our review of this matter, and we have nothing new to report at this time.”
So far, no lawsuits have been filed against Return to the Land. But experts like Simi and Miller-Idriss say this isn’t an isolated experiment. The group is part of a broader trend of extremists rebranding themselves as homesteaders, eco-villagers, or defenders of “traditional values” in an effort to make their ideology more palatable to the mainstream. By adopting the language of sustainability, self-sufficiency, and family life, these groups can appeal to disaffected Americans who might not otherwise identify with overt white nationalism — blurring the line between fringe extremism and lifestyle choice.
“This housing development comes at a moment when far right ideas are regularly normalized, legitimized, and even celebrated within a context of antipathy to diversity, equity and inclusion, tremendous anti-immigration sentiment, and widespread antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Miller-Idriss tells us.
Even if legal action were taken against them, the group might not face much pushback in today’s political climate — shaped by the Trump administration’s crackdowns on DEI initiatives and immigration.
“We’ve had a president who has consistently promoted political violence. That mirrors white supremacist movements, whose defining characteristic is their embrace of violence,” says Simi. “I don’t think it can be overstated how influential the broader political environment has been.”
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