Kenneth Glad
An isolated rural community promotes a return to traditional living and self-sufficiency. Its admissions system and approach to children’s education have attracted wider attention.
Around 40 people live at a 165-acre settlement near Ravenden in Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains, writes the Daily Mail.
The property is operated by Return to the Land, a white-separatist association led by Eric Orwoll. Applicants must identify as white, be considered by the group to have entirely European ancestry and accept its definition of traditional values.
Candidates complete a questionnaire and telephone interview covering religion, abortion, vaccination, gender identity and same-sex relationships. The organisation’s board then votes on their admission.
Applicants face ideological screening
Orwoll denies that the association promotes white supremacy. He told the Daily Mail: “I think what we actually advocate is tolerance, free association, and self-determination.”
The Daily Express cites public accounts connected to senior members, associates and self-described residents that had circulated antisemitic messages, Holocaust denial and references linked to neo-Nazi ideology.
According to both publications, Orwoll has publicly praised David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader and longtime white nationalist figure, and has also spoken about the possibility of a “second Hitler” emerging in the future.
The reports place those remarks alongside antisemitic and extremist material shared by people connected to the movement. However, they did not conclude that every post, comment or statement made by an associate, supporter or self-described resident reflected an official position formally adopted by Return to the Land.
Children learn disputed claims
Children at the settlement are homeschooled. Orwoll says lessons present competing interpretations of slavery, segregation, Nazism and the Holocaust.
His comments include claims that the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust has been exaggerated and that evidence of a centrally organised extermination campaign is inadequate. Those assertions contradict Nazi records, physical evidence, historical research and testimony from victims and perpetrators.
Tess Ulrey, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, told the Daily Mail: “We believe that kind of homeschooling is a violation of children’s rights, and harms their ability to thrive in a diverse and connected world.”
Return to the Land also discourages interracial marriage and portrays the Arkansas site as a voluntary project centred on family, heritage and self-sufficiency. Its race-based admissions rules and the teaching described by Orwoll continue to place the community under scrutiny.
Sources: Daily Express, Daily Mail
