In October 2023, a gaggle calling itself Return to the Land established its first “Whites only community” within the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. They adopted that with a second enclave close by in 2025.
The group, which describes itself as a “private membership association” that helps teams kind “European heritage communities,” plans to construct 4 extra websites, together with one other location within the Ozarks and two in Appalachia.
Return to the Land believes that by calling themselves a personal membership affiliation they’ll create a white ethnostate – a kind of state through which residence is restricted to white individuals – and legally exclude individuals based mostly on race, faith and sexual orientation.
Should you learn the phrases of Eric Orwoll, the group’s co-founder, its mission is evident: “You want a white nation? Build a white town … it can be done. We’re doing it.”
As a scholar of right-wing extremism, I’ve examined a number of teams calling for a white homeland in America. The creation of a white ethnostate is usually seen as an final objective of such white nationalism, which argues that white individuals kind a part of a genetically and culturally superior race deserving of safety and preservation. Whereas Return to the Land doesn’t determine as white nationalists, their statements typically align with the ideology.
White ethnostates, large and small
Among the finest-known plans for a white ethnostate is the Northwest Crucial, popularized by white nationalists in the course of the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s. The plan concerned sure residents taking 10% of the USA – the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana – and excluding all nonwhite individuals from dwelling there.
Proponents of the plan argued that these states have been already majority white and contained giant tracts of undeveloped land, making the territory perfect for white-only settlement. Excessive-profile extremists of the time resembling Richard Butler, Robert Mathews and David Lane supported the plan.
Nonetheless right this moment, teams such because the Northwest Entrance, a white nationalist group based in 2009 and positioned within the Pacific Northwest, proceed to advertise variations of this concept.
Whereas the Pacific Northwest has an extended historical past with right-wing extremist organizing, the proponents of whites-only communities have additionally focused areas of the Northeast as potential areas for a white ethnostate.
In 2018, for instance, Tom Kawczynski, city supervisor of Jackman, Maine, was fired when his views got here to gentle, together with views which were characterised as “pro-white.”
White supremacist Craig Cobb stands in an empty lot he owns in Leith, N.D., on Aug. 26, 2013. Cobb tried unsuccessfully to show the city into an all-white enclave.
AP Photograph/Kevin Cederstrom
Extra just lately, in 2023, the Individuals’s Initiative of New England, a splinter group of the neo-Nazi group Nationwide Socialist Membership-131, launched themselves on the web platform Substack. There, the group laid out its objective of creating the six states of New England – Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont – as white-only.
The objective of gaining management of a number of states is unrealistic, in fact, no less than peacefully. Due to this fact, a well-liked different, alongside the traces of Return to the Land’s actions, is to ascertain smaller all-white communities.
In 2013, media retailers reported that neo-Nazi Craig Cobb was shopping for land within the small city of Leith, North Dakota, to construct a white nationalist neighborhood. The city rallied to oppose this try.
Later that 12 months, Cobb was charged with seven felonies associated to confronting residents with a gun. He was sentenced to probation for 4 years and deeded the property again to the city in 2014.
And in 2021, leaked Telegram chats revealed that Christopher Pohlhaus, a former U.S. Marine and founding father of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, needed to ascertain a whites-only neighborhood in Springfield, Maine. Pohlhaus was growing a army coaching facility as a part of these efforts when media protection led him to promote the property and transfer out of state.
The hazard of a white ethnostate
These varied makes an attempt to develop a white ethnostate aren’t merely particular person, remoted instances. They kind half of a bigger motion towards reaching white nationalism.
A significant a part of white nationalism right this moment is concentrated on anti-immigrant hatred. That has spurred main acts of maximum violence such because the 2019 murders of 23 individuals in El Paso, Texas, nearly all of whom have been Hispanic.
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., with Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., speaks a couple of decision condemning the nice substitute concept in Washington, D.C., on June 8, 2022.
AP Photograph/Manuel Balce Ceneta
The “great replacement theory,” a conspiracy concept common amongst white nationalists, argues that varied insurance policies are resulting in the destruction of the white race. This concept impressed the 2022 mass killing of 10 Black People in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
The shooter chosen the grocery store due to its location in a predominantly Black neighborhood and left behind a white supremacy manifesto.
Communities throughout the U.S. have efficiently resisted the institution of white ethnostates.
The residents of Leith, North Dakota, did this by creating a web site informing individuals about what was occurring of their neighborhood. Public outcry additionally met Pohlhaus in Maine.
As for Return to the Land, Arkansas Lawyer Common Tim Griffin mentioned in July 2025 that his workplace is reviewing the group’s actions and whether or not they violate the regulation.
“Racism has no place in a free society,” he mentioned, “but from a legal perspective, we have not seen anything that would indicate any state or federal laws have been broken.”
