Education

Standoff at whites-only city deep in the Ozark Mountains as activists claim kids are being spoon-fed vile propaganda

By Editor,James Reinl

Copyright dailymail

Standoff at whites-only city deep in the Ozark Mountains as activists claim kids are being spoon-fed vile propaganda

Officials in Arkansas have launched an investigation into a whites-only enclave in the Ozark Mountains, amid mounting fears that a dozen homeschooled children there are being indoctrinated with neo-Nazi ideology instead of learning basic skills.

The so-called Return to the Land (RTTL) development is tucked away on a 160-acre compound near Ravenden, Arkansas. Its leaders are Eric Orwoll, a far-right YouTuber and former porn performer, and Peter Csere, an extremist activist once accused of stabbing and nearly killing a man in Ecuador.

The group bars people of color, Muslims, Jews and others from its land. Campaigners and education activists say children in this isolated compound are in grave danger of being brainwashed and need to be rescued.

Tess Ulrey, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) nonprofit, said Arkansas law leaves the RTTL youngsters highly vulnerable.

‘In a radically insular group like RTTL, the educational environment may uphold white supremacy ideology, promote speculative and fictionalized sciences, encourage harmful and unhealthy practices, and easily deny children access to the tools to form their own beliefs, or hear from a different viewpoint,’ Ulrey 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.’

Though RTTL has not disclosed what its children are studying, outsiders have been rattled by evidence of extremist influence. During a recent media visit, Hitler’s notorious manifesto Mein Kampf was spotted on Orwoll’s office bookshelf.

The compound’s radical nature has fueled fears the children are being spoon-fed supremacist dogma.

In the past, investigators across the US have exposed illicit homeschooling materials that glorify Hitler’s Third Reich, demean Martin Luther King Jr., and openly claim black people are less smart than whites.

They even uncovered lesson plans for baking a ‘Führer cake’ on Hitler’s birthday from an Ohio-based group in 2023.

Orwoll has previously defended RTTL as a legitimate social experiment.

‘It’s important to our members to raise their children around whites – people they feel comfortable around,’ he told the Daily Mail earlier this year.

He insists the enclave, also branded ‘Community1’ and ‘The Settlement,’ is legal, and does not flout America’s civil rights laws because it is a private, members-only club, and so can limit who may join.

The self-described ‘white identitarian’ sees RTTL as the beginning of a much larger movement.

He bills the compound as the first of many nationwide that doesn’t flout fair housing laws while rejecting all applicants of color, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and those who identify as LGBTQ.

Critics say the case highlights just how permissive Arkansas’s homeschooling laws are.

Parents must simply notify their local school district of their intent to homeschool. They are not required to have a diploma, teaching experience, or submit curricula for review, says Ulrey.

‘There is no legislation in place to continue oversight of education, safety of the homeschooled children or opportunity access,’ she says.

That legal blind spot, she adds, denies children in the enclave the chance to receive a balanced education.

State lawmakers should back a draft law that supports the ‘rights of children to access an open future’, she said.

Others say the problem goes beyond Arkansas. At least 38 other US states have similarly weak oversight of homeschooling.

Kieryn Darkwater, a political campaigner who writes about growing up in ‘cult and cult-like environments’ during the 1990s, told the Daily Mail that RTTL represents a grim repeat of that pattern.

‘The families indoctrinating their children with white supremacist ideology, such as those who live in racist communes like RTTL, are not providing education and have chosen to actively harm their kids’ chances of success in adulthood,’ said Darkwater.

Investigations elsewhere suggest what RTTL’s homeschooling may look like.

In 2023, researchers uncovered the ‘Dissident Homeschool’, an Ohio-based network that distributed racist, antisemitic and homophobic materials to far-right families nationwide.

Through the encrypted app Telegram, parents received Nazi-infused lesson plans: handwriting exercises quoting Adolf Hitler, distorted accounts smearing Martin Luther King Jr., and even family activities like baking a ‘Führer cake’ on Hitler’s birthday, decorated with swastikas, a Vice investigation showed.

Critics fear RTTL could be doing the same — cloaking indoctrination in the language of ‘parental freedom’.

The pasts of RTTL’s leaders add to the unease.

Orwoll once made money performing in livestreamed sex videos with his then-wife Caitlyn, who now lives at RTTL with their four children. He now denounces pornography, presenting himself as a Christian traditionalist.

Csere, meanwhile, was arrested in Ecuador over the stabbing of a miner — an incident he claims was self-defense and which remains under investigation.

He has also been accused of stealing tens of thousands from a vegan eco-village, allegations he denies.

Both men have openly promoted white supremacist views. Orwoll appeared as a guest at a gathering led by extremist firebrand Nick Fuentes, while Csere has downplayed the Holocaust online.

In July 2025, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin launched an investigation into RTTL, citing possible violations of civil rights and fair housing laws.

Griffin’s spokesman told the Daily Mail that the probe is ‘continuing’.

Neither Orwoll, Csere, nor the Arkansas Department of Education responded to our requests for comment.

RTTL is home to about 40 men, women and children, living in cabins connected by gravel roads.

Applicants undergo an interview, background check, and must prove white European heritage by filling out a questionnaire and sharing family photographs.

The settlement is remote — half an hour to the nearest grocery store, and miles from Arkansas’s state capital.

Orwoll recently acknowledged in another interview that about a dozen children are being homeschooled on the site.

He said it was up to ‘parents to educate their kids how they want.’

But with Mein Kampf on the shelf and an openly racist ethos at the community’s core, campaigners say that freedom is being abused at the expense of vulnerable children.

For Ulrey, the case underlines the urgent need for reform.

‘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,’ she said.

She says Arkansas lawmakers must act before more children are harmed.

For now, the children of RTTL remain out of reach — growing up behind closed gates in a whites-only enclave, homeschooled by parents who openly embrace racist ideology.

And as campaigners warn, unless the law changes, the next generation raised in the Arkansas woods may emerge not educated, but radicalized.