They’re not hiding it anymore.
While Missourians were going about their lives, a network of white supremacists led by a Norwegian-born French horn player who once monetized his own sex tapes and a Hungarian jazz pianist wanted for attempted murder in Ecuador have been quietly scouting land in our state.
Their mission? To build whites-only compounds across the Midwest—and Missouri is squarely in their crosshairs.
Return to the Land (RTTL), the neo-Nazi housing project that made global headlines for building an explicitly whites-only compound in Ravenden, Arkansas, isn’t satisfied with one segregated settlement. According to their own statements and promotional materials, they’re actively planning multiple new communities—including at least two in Missouri—as part of a broader strategy to establish what they call “a network of cities” that will eventually become a white ethnostate.
The Architect of Apartheid
Eric Orwoll, the 35-year-old president of RTTL, has been explicit about his plans. In a video that’s been circulating among white nationalist circles, he laid out the roadmap: “First—get a neighborhood. Then, get a town. Then get a city. Then get a network of cities. Then maybe think about the country.”
He is constructing a methodical plan to resurrect Jim Crow segregation in 21st century America—and they’re using Missouri as a testing ground.
Orwoll didn’t arrive at fascism overnight. According to extensive reporting by The New York Times and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Orwoll was “red-pilled”—white supremacist speak for radicalized—through YouTube comment sections where followers fed him Great Replacement conspiracy theories and racist pseudoscience about genetic intelligence. Before he had four children and founded a Nazi compound, he was performing live sex shows on the adult platform Chaturbate with his then-wife Caitlin, monetizing their bedroom for gas money.
Now he wants to “save the white race.”
The hypocrisy is almost too absurd to comprehend—except it isn’t funny. Because between his sermons about “traditional values” and condemnations of pornography, Orwoll has been building a genuine white power infrastructure. He’s networked with Thomas Sewell, the violent Australian neo-Nazi who radicalized Christchurch mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant—the terrorist who murdered 51 people in cold blood.
Orwoll photographed himself training at the gym of Patriot Front, the neo-fascist group linked to numerous hate crimes.
He keeps a copy of Mein Kampf on his bookshelf.
The Fraud and the Fugitive
But Orwoll isn’t alone. His co-founder and legal architect, Peter Csere, brings his own disturbing history to the project.
Before helping build RTTL, Csere founded a similar community in Ecuador called Fruit Haven—from which he allegedly stole $65,000 and fled the country. According to reporting from the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and confirmed by Fruit Haven’s own public statement, Csere stabbed an Ecuadorian miner, causing a collapsed lung, and was arrested on potential attempted murder charges. He left the country before formal charges could be filed. He is still wanted in Ecuador.
This is the man who designed RTTL’s legal framework—a structure explicitly intended to circumvent the Fair Housing Act of 1968, one of the crowning achievements of the Civil Rights Movement.
Csere’s online presence reads like a greatest hits of white supremacist ideology. He’s posted that “the automatic base nature of Africans is that of a brute animal.”
He’s called for deporting everyone with skin tint “light mocha and below.” He’s written, “We want all the browns gone.” In July 2025, he denied the Holocaust happened, then asked, “But would you like to talk about why it should have?”
These are not fringe figures operating in shadows. These are men actively buying land, building infrastructure, and recruiting families to their cause. And they’re doing it in our backyard.
The Legal Loophole They’re Exploiting
Here’s where it gets truly dangerous: RTTL believes they’ve found a legal pathway to enforce racial segregation.
Their model works like this: A limited liability company (LLC) called Wisdom Woods owns the land. A private membership association (PMA) vets potential residents through applications asking about their views on segregation, immigration, and “transgenderism”—and, critically, their racial ancestry. Approved members can then purchase shares in the LLC, each tied to specific plots of land.
RTTL claims that because they’re not technically “selling land,” they’re exempt from federal fair housing laws. They point to a narrow exemption in the Fair Housing Act designed to allow churches to provide housing for clergy on church property. They argue their PMA qualifies under this exemption.
Civil rights attorneys have made clear this is bullshit. “Federal and state law, including the Fair Housing Act, prohibit housing discrimination based on race, period,” said ReNika Moore, director of the racial justice program at the ACLU. “Repackaging residential segregation as a ‘private club’ is still a textbook violation of federal law.”
But RTTL isn’t worried. They’re betting on the current political climate. As Orwoll told a white nationalist podcaster, “Return to the Land needs to strike while the iron is hot.” With Trump-appointed judges on federal benches and a Republican-controlled state government in Missouri, they see this as their moment.
They’ve raised over $185,000 on the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo—including nearly $70,000 specifically for “legal framework research” to defend their segregationist model in court. They want to set precedent. They want to win. And they want other white supremacist groups to replicate their blueprint across the country.
Missouri in the Crosshairs
So where exactly are they looking in Missouri?
While RTTL has been characteristically cagey about specific locations—likely to avoid the kind of community resistance that could derail their plans—Orwoll confirmed to The New York Times that he has “a trip planned to Missouri soon” to “look at potential land sites” and “vet people who may not necessarily be fully vetted.”
According to RTTL’s own website and promotional materials, they’re planning multiple communities in the Ozarks region. This makes strategic sense: Like Arkansas, southern Missouri is overwhelmingly white, rural, and conservative. Property is cheap. Local law enforcement is sparse. And the history of white supremacist organizing in the region runs deep.
The Ozarks have long been a destination for white supremacist movements attempting to build separatist compounds. In the 1970s, the Christian extremist group The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) operated a 224-acre compound in Arkansas near the Missouri border, where they offered “End Time Overcomer Survival Training School” and stockpiled weapons. The FBI shut them down in 1985 after discovering a massive cache of cyanide they planned to use to poison the white supply of major U.S. cities including Chicago, New York and Washington D.C.
More recently, neo-Nazi Billy Roper has attempted to establish white settlements in the Arkansas-Missouri Ozarks. The region’s isolation, racial demographics, and libertarian politics make it attractive to fascist organizing.
RTTL is explicit about why they’re choosing places like Missouri. As Orwoll told a podcaster, they chose Arkansas because it’s “a very red state, so if our case goes to trial at any point, we’re very likely to have a judge that’s on our side.”
They’re making the same calculation about Missouri.
The Ecosystem of Hate
RTTL isn’t operating in isolation. They’re part of a growing ecosystem of white nationalist organizing that’s been emboldened by the current political moment.
Among the residents and supporters of their Arkansas compound:
Raven_Resolve, a PMA member who has posted over 100 times praising Hitler, called for “removing all Jews,” and claimed RTTL is forming “a national army of future warriors.” His identity remains unknown, but he’s an active, dues-paying member of their community.
“Sheltered Max”, reportedly living on the RTTL property in Arkansas, who tweets obsessively about “cannibalizing Jews” and “eradicating Jews,” claiming “Jew hatred is the great unifier.” He apparently lives on public assistance while advocating for violence against the people whose taxes support him.
Caitlin Smith, Orwoll’s ex-wife and mother of his four children, who posts commemorations of Mein Kampf‘s 100th anniversary while showing off her goats. She now lives on the compound with her new husband, homeschooling children in an environment saturated with Nazi ideology.
These aren’t anonymous internet trolls. These are people with addresses, with properties, with plans. And they’re building infrastructure to bring more people into their movement.
The Threat Is Not Abstract
Let’s be absolutely clear about what’s happening: A network of white supremacists with explicit ties to violent fascist movements is actively planning to purchase land in Missouri to build segregated compounds that exclude Black people, Jewish people, LGBTQ people, and anyone who doesn’t pass their racial purity tests.
They openly praise apartheid. They glorify Hitler. They coordinate with neo-Nazis internationally. And they’re raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to expand their operations.
When Orwoll says, “Even though we’re small now, the cultural climate is with us,” he’s not wrong. The Trump administration has systematically attacked DEI programs, purged materials about racism from government institutions, and appointed extremists to positions of power. The Arkansas Attorney General opened an investigation into RTTL—and then it quietly went nowhere.
The fascists are betting they can win. They’re betting that their money, their media savvy, and their timing will allow them to build the infrastructure for white nationalism in plain sight.
Missouri Must Respond
The question isn’t whether RTTL will attempt to establish communities in Missouri. They’ve already announced their intentions. The question is whether Missourians—particularly those of us committed to justice and opposed to fascism will allow them to do it unchallenged.
This requires vigilance at every level:
Community organizing: Residents in rural Missouri communities need to be aware of who’s buying land in their areas and what they’re planning to do with it. When white supremacists attempt to establish compounds, communities have the power to make clear they’re not welcome.
Legal accountability: Missouri lawmakers needs to proactively investigate RTTL’s activities in the state and make clear that attempts to circumvent fair housing laws will be met with the full force of legal action.
Media scrutiny: RTTL thrives when they can control their narrative, presenting themselves as harmless homesteaders celebrating “European heritage.” Investigative journalism that exposes their ties to violent extremism and their explicitly racist ideology disrupts that narrative.
Political pressure: State legislators and local officials must make clear that Missouri will not be a safe haven for white supremacist organizing. This means enforcing existing civil rights laws and considering additional legislation to close the loopholes RTTL is attempting to exploit.
But most importantly, this requires everyone—particularly white Missourians who may be tempted to dismiss this as “not my problem”—to recognize that the fight against fascism is not abstract. It’s not somewhere else. It’s not someone else’s battle.
It’s here. It’s now. And it’s coming to Missouri.
White Corporate Media’s Complicity in Sanitizing Fascism
It is also critical to address how mainstream media has covered RTTL—because the language matters, and white corporate media keeps getting it catastrophically wrong.
The New York Times called it a “new development” where founders want to “confirm that applicants are white.” Sky News produced a free mini-documentary for the group, describing residents as “homesteaders” pursuing “intentional living.” The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette framed RTTL as a group with “traditional views” rather than explicitly fascist ideology. Even The Forward, a prominent Jewish publication, ran what can only be described as soft, equivocating coverage that treated open anti-Semitism as a matter for polite debate.
To be absolutely clear: These are self-proclaimed Nazis. They praise Hitler. They commemorate Mein Kampf. They deny the Holocaust while saying it should have happened. They post that “no Jew is innocent” and call for “eradicating Jews.” They coordinate with violent neo-Nazi networks internationally. They explicitly, repeatedly, without ambiguity, identify as white supremacists building a whites-only settlement that bars Black people, Jewish people, and LGBTQ people by design.
There is no reason—none—to call them “homesteaders” or describe their compound as a “development.” These words are sanitizing propaganda, and every time a mainstream outlet uses them, they do the fascists’ work for them.
RTTL has a sophisticated media strategy. They invite journalists onto their property for carefully curated tours. They present themselves as thoughtful philosophers concerned with “community” and “heritage.” They let reporters photograph their goats and their children playing on rusty swing sets. They speak in measured tones about “European ancestry” and “freedom of association.” They know that if they can get mainstream outlets to frame them as eccentric ruralists rather than dangerous extremists, they win.
And it’s working. When the Times runs photos of Orwoll standing earnestly on his gravel road, when Sky News films residents talking about “embracing our culture,” when outlets describe their project as “controversial” rather than illegal and fascist, they’re giving neo-Nazis exactly what they want: legitimacy, normalization, and the appearance of reasonable people with different viewpoints.
The Kansas City Defender will not play that game. We will not sanitize fascism with neutral language. We will not pretend that people who want to resurrect Jim Crow segregation are simply “preserving heritage.” We will not grant respectability to individuals who coordinate with terrorists, praise genocide, and build paramilitary infrastructure designed to exclude and ultimately eliminate people of color, Jewish people, and queer people.
Words matter. Framing matters. And when white media outlets soften the language around self-proclaimed Nazis, they become complicit in the mainstreaming of fascism. Missouri deserves better than that sanitized coverage. So here’s what RTTL actually is: a neo-Nazi network building whites-only compounds with the explicit goal of establishing racial apartheid. Everything that follows needs to be understood through that lens—not through the lens of homesteading, heritage, or housing experiments.
They are Nazis. They say so themselves. Let’s proceed accordingly.
A Call to Action
The Kansas City Defender will continue investigating RTTL’s activities in Missouri. We will track land purchases, identify organizers, and expose connections between RTTL and other white supremacist networks operating in our region.
But journalism alone cannot stop the rise of fascism. That requires collective action.
If you see RTTL attempting to organize in your community, document it. If you see land being purchased by their LLCs, report it. If you see white supremacists attempting to normalize their ideology, confront it.
The time to stop them is now—before they own the land, before they establish the infrastructure, before they set legal precedent that could open the floodgates for segregationist projects across the country.
Missouri has a choice. We can allow neo-Nazis to establish compounds in our state, to raise their children in environments of hate, to build networks that will eventually advocate for—and organize toward—ethnic cleansing. Or we can make clear, unequivocally, that there is no place for this ideology in our communities.
The fascists are organized. They’re funded. They’re strategizing. The question is: Are we?
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