‘Return to the Land’: White supremacists building whites-only settlement in Arkansas

A group of white supremacists is founding a settlement in Arkansas that will only allow in white Christians.

The 160-acre community in the Ozark hills near Ravenden, Arkansas, named “Return to the Land” (RTTL), was founded in 2023 by Eric Orwoll and Peter Csereby, according to a Sky News report that aired this week.

It is explicitly declared a whites‑only settlement, excluding Jewish people, followers of non‑European religions, and LGBTQ individuals, vetting members based on European ancestry via interviews and membership screening processes, Sky News reported.

About 40 people currently live on-site, and hundreds more worldwide have paid for membership. According to Sky News, some of the members are police officers and federal agents.

Those who pass the group’s screening processes are offered to buy land as LLC shares tied to personal plots, which RTTL believes allows it to bypass civil rights housing laws.

Because RTTL has a legal status as a Private Members Association (PMA), the group claims that its LLC structure exempts it from the Fair Housing Act. Civil‑rights groups say the arrangement is likely unlawful.

Civil rights groups like the NAACP have condemned the community, warning that it revives segregationist ideas. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin told Sky News that his office is reviewing whether RTTL is violating state and federal law.

Within the settlement, the Sky News reporter saw graded land, laid roads, a boundary fence, cabins, a community center, a schoolhouse, goat herds, wells, and community members preparing shared meals together.

Orwoll described the project to Sky News as a “fortress for the white race” and framed it as a model for white separatist ethnonationalist living.

He was ambivalent about his feelings toward Adolf Hitler, but explicitly discussed the idea of a new charismatic leader akin to a “second coming” of Hitler.

“You want a white nation? Build a white town,” he told Sky News.

RTTL’s Telegram group and public chats include numerous Nazi references, such as Csere posting “1488,” a reference to the white supremacist “14 words” slogan and to the “Heil Hitler” chant.

Orwoll envisions RTTL as the first of many whites-only settlements to be built in the US and internationally.

There are three other settlements currently being constructed, which Orwoll sees as a “path to power” for the ethnonationalist movement.