The owners of an Arkansas whites-only community that critics have described as “evil and reprehensible” is now striking back by suing a British-owned broadcaster for defamation.
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“The men — Eric Orwoll, Peter J. Csere and Scott Hallowood — seek $2.7 million in punitive and compensatory damages from the broadcasters over a July 21, 2025, documentary on the community near Ravenden,” Arkansas Online reported on Monday. “The group says Sky UK doctored a photo to create a ‘whites only’ sign on a tree and that the sign doesn’t exist, as well as attributed to them a comment made on X stating, ‘We started a Whites only community,’ when the comment was posted on an account they do not control.”
Orwoll, Csere and Hallowood filed the suit in a U.S. District Court in Little Rock in which they claimed they suffered from the supposedly defamatory claims.
“We don’t know whether we’re going to win or not,” Csere explained during a July 23 podcast. “We do think we have a very good case.” Orwoll and Csere said they also plan on filing suits against other groups and people.
“As promised, we’re going on the offensive,” Orwoll argued. “There are lots of people who have behaved in unwise ways.”
In their Arkansas residential project, known as Return to the Land, the three men purchased tracts of land and planned on dividing it up among like-minded people who did not want to be in an area where Blacks, Jews and other minorities were told they were not welcome.
“The men claim the broadcast includes a photo of a sign tacked to a tree on the community’s property that says ‘Whites Only,’” Arkansas Online reported. “They deny that any such sign has existed on the property and say Sky UK doctored a photo of the Return to the Land logo to produce the image.”
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They added, “They also claim that interviews done by Sky UK’s reporters were edited in a misleading way, selectively choosing responses from Orwoll without context and qualifications.”
Last year The New York Times reporter Debra Kamin reported that President Donald Trump’s policies have emboldened people like the Arkansas racists to act in ways that are technically illegal.
“Racism is, as you know, definitely not anything new. But definitely ‘why now’ is because there is a feeling among the architects of this community and the people who created it that they can get away with it now, because even though the laws obviously very explicitly make it illegal to discriminate, a lot of things that we took as rules and norms just a few months ago no longer really apply,” Kamin wrote. “They feel that at the highest levels of government, they will be allowed to do this.”
Reporting on the community last year, Wired’s David Gilbert argued that “the online histories of the group’s leaders tell a different story” than their claims to being peaceful. “Members have espoused virulently racist and antisemitic views and repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. One of the leaders says he is currently under criminal investigation in Ecuador. (Return to the Land President Eric) Orwoll himself has spoken about the coming of a second Hitler and praised KKK leader David Duke.”
Gilbert added, “He is also closely aligned to an international network of far-right influencers, extremists, and white supremacists, including Thomas Sewell, a neo-Nazi living in Australia who was the founder of a group that influenced the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter. Despite this, the Return to the Land community has been lauded by far-right influencers and has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.”
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