The attorney general of Arkansas says his office is looking into a white supremacist group that has effectively created a whites-only community in his state and is seeking to expand its footprint to Missouri.
Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin has pursued bigoted initiatives in his own right, as evidenced by his participation in the right-wing crusade against diversity and school lesson plans that discuss racial injustice.
But a whites-only, anti-Jewish community formed in Arkansas by a white supremacist group that calls itself Return to the Land is apparently a step too far in the AG’s eyes.
Orwoll’s self-expressed motive basically amounts to racist, anti-diversity hysteria.
Group co-founder Eric Orwoll recently garnered national attention for the segregated community he helped launch on roughly 150 acres in northeast Arkansas. And he garnered more attention this week after revealing that his group might launch a community in Springfield, Missouri, with his self-expressed motive basically amounting to racist, anti-diversity hysteria.
“Whites should have the ability to live among their own people if that’s what they want to do, and mass immigration is quickly making that nearly impossible in many Western nations,” Orwoll told KOLR-TV, the CBS affiliate in Springfield. “If individuals decide to live in multiracial communities, then they should be allowed to do so, but we don’t want racial forced on us in every aspect of life.” Orwoll, who also told the outlet that he plans to help start communities in all 50 states, has effectively asserted a form of the “sovereign citizens” argument in claiming that his group is allowed to discriminate because, he says, they are doing so on private land. According to The Independent, the Arkansas AG said in a statement: “Racial discrimination has no place in Arkansas or anywhere in a free society. These allegations raise all sorts of legal issues, including constitutional concerns. My office is reviewing the matter.” Orwoll’s plans for racially homogenous communities that exclude Jews echo visions pursued by white supremacist groups before his — like the Ku Klux Klan. And the Return to the Land ethos, centered on an old-timey vision of a white utopia where residents can live and thrive off the Earth’s resources without having to share them with nonwhite people and non-Christians, also shares themes with the “homesteader movement” that’s popular among American conservatives.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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