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Eric Orwoll wants to build settlements for whites only.
Screenshot / X /@ Aarvoll_
A village is being built in the US state of Arkansas where only white people are allowed to live. What founder Eric Orwoll is selling as a "return to the roots" is in fact a return to racial segregation.
"If you want a white nation, you have to build a white city," says Eric Orwoll in a social media video. "It can be done. We're doing it right now". Orwell is 35, grew up in California and has a classical music education. He has streamed sex porn with his ex-wife, is well-read, eloquent - and dreams of a white America.
He does not dream alone.
Deep in the remote, sparsely populated Ozark Mountains in the US state of Arkansas, a village is currently being built that is so openly racist that you could be forgiven for thinking you have landed in a parallel world.
For some a utopia, for others a dystopia, the project is called "Return to the Land". It is both the name of a 160-hectare site, on which around 40 people currently live, and of an association that, according to Orwoll, hundreds have already joined. More important than the one-off membership fee of 25 dollars is the transmission of information about the ethnic origin of the candidates.
Anyone who wants to live in "Return to the Land" must be white and of "European descent". This can be proven with a family tree. Blacks, Latinos, Jews, homosexuals or other minorities are not welcome. "It's a natural instinct to surround yourself with the people who are most like you," says Eric Orwoll, one of the founders, to a reporter from the German newspaper "Die Zeit".
Officially, the founders do not see themselves as political activists, but as a retreat movement. They want to be "among themselves" - far away from the cities, modernity and diversity. And yet they repeatedly seek publicity, granting journalists insights into their self-declared paradise.
Orwoll dreams of an America that is "white, Christian and tradition-conscious". He sees multiculturalism and diversity as a threat. "It's about heritage, traditions and the feeling of belonging to a group," he says. This does not mean that he hates black people or Mexicans, Orwell emphasizes. "They just have different cultural backgrounds."
Such statements are typical of white supremacists, who describe themselves as "culturally conservative". Their true goal is a racist social order. The ideological foundation is the so-called Great Replacement Theory: a conspiracy narrative according to which white people in Western societies are being systematically replaced by immigrants from other cultures and with a different skin color. Nazis in German-speaking countries have coined the term "Umvolkung" for this.
Orwoll, who quickly hid his copy of "Mein Kampf" when a photographer from the "New York Times" visited him before the camera went off, repeatedly takes up this narrative, for example when he is outraged by the fact that black or Asian actors play historical roles in Netflix series such as Bridgerton. For him, this is proof that "everything goes too far".
The fact that projects like "Return to the Land" can come about is an expression of a political shift. In recent years, the far right has regained influence in the US - fueled by economic fears, frustration with political gridlock and, not least, the rollback of diversity measures under the Trump administration.
A US flag and a sheepdog protect against bad neighbors.
Screenshot / X /@ Aarvoll_
"They see this as a very opportune time," explains Peter Simi, a sociologist and extremism researcher at Chapman University in California, in the New York Times. "They have well-meaning people at the highest levels of government, even in the Department of Justice or the Department of Defense."
Orwoll also sees that the moment is perfect. On a fundraising page, he wrote: "We need to strike while the iron is hot." The 35-year-old believes that "a precedent must be set now - while the cultural and legal climate is favorable." After all, it is impossible to predict what things will look like after Trump's second term.
With the creation of a settlement for whites only, "Return to the Land" is legally in a gray area. Officially, it is a "Private Membership Association", a kind of exclusive club that is allowed to set its own admission criteria. Orwoll argues that this means the project is not subject to anti-discrimination laws, which prohibit racial segregation in the housing sector.
Legal experts see it differently. The Arkansas Attorney General's Office has now launched an investigation. If it is confirmed that applicants are being rejected on the basis of their ethnic origin, this would be a clear violation of federal law.
The 40 or so people who already live in their self-contained settlement do not care about such considerations. They believe they are no longer safe in a multicultural society.
A 26-year-old resident tells the "Zeit" reporter that he used to live in Missouri, in a city with over 90 percent white inhabitants: "Everything was still fine then." But then more and more blacks and others moved in. Now the proportion of the white population is less than 70 percent: "I don't want to live like that with my family, where I have to be afraid that something will happen to my children."
Caitlin Smith expresses even more clearly what the settlers are concerned about. The ex-wife of Eric Orwell lives on the site with another man: "The most important thing about this project for me is that I can check up on my neighbors. What makes a person is their past - and their genetics."
"Return to the Land" is not an isolated case, but part of a growing trend. Right-wing groups are increasingly trying to create physical retreats - enclaves where they can live out their world view undisturbed.
The village in Arkansas is a symbol of a development: the normalization of extremist ideas under the guise of tradition, religion and identity. Orwoll's dream of a "white America" shows how fragile the foundations of US society really are.
