Debra Kamin

Eric, can you give me some of your background?

I know that you're not originally from Arkansas.

So Eric Orwell had a very typical American childhood.

Where?

He grew up in La Mirada, California, which is near Los Angeles.

Middle-class background.

He says when he was in high school, he was a libertarian.

He had friends from across the spectrum of diversity.

He studied music in college at a very prestigious conservatory on the East Coast.

And at one point he actually played in the pit orchestra for Shen Yun.

And he says he considers they were a cult, but he also was intrigued by the way they had their own community and they lived together and they shared a philosophy that everybody who was part of the community ascribed to.

In addition to being a pit musician for Shen Yun, he also studied Greek and Latin philosophy on his own, recreationally.

Just like on the internet.

He just started reading and informing himself and started making YouTube videos where he shared his views, kind of like a homegrown philosopher.

And a lot of people on those YouTube videos started making comments about ideas that are very prevalent within the white nationalist community.

One of them being the great replacement theory, which is the idea that whites are actually going to be replaced by people of color and Jews and non-whites based on sheer numbers and demographics and birth rate.

Maybe we'll try to... And one of the people who commented was this guy named Peter Seary, who is now his partner at Return to the Land.

They struck up a relationship online, like so many of these conversations are.

And the two of them, they become convinced that the Great Replacement Theory is true.

They use the term white genocide.