Property startup wants to develop a haven for right-wingers in rural Kentucky, report says

A road outside Mammoth Cave National Park in Brownsville, eastern Kentucky, Mark C Stevens/Getty Images

• A venture fund and a real estate startup are joining forces to build a right-wing community in Kentucky.
• The Highland Rim Project seeks to establish an “aligned community.”
• In 2011, a similar movement encouraged conservative Christians to relocate to the US Northwest.

A planned residential development in Kentucky is being pitched as a “haven” for right-wingers, the Guardian reports.

The venture fund and a real estate startup behind the development are touting the development as an “aligned community” for people disillusioned with the “cultural insanity of the broader country.”

The plans align with the American Redoubt movement, a political migration initiative started in 2011 by an American survivalist. Instead of Kentucky, however, the movement encouraged conservative Christians to relocate to Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and parts of Oregon and Washington.

The project is known as the “Highland Rim Project” (HRP), with plans to establish a geographical and political enclave in rural Kentucky and Tennessee.

The project is being developed by New Founding, a firm describing itself as building and backing “companies defined by American ideals and a positive national vision.”

New Founding’s website says the real estate project hopes to develop rural towns and communities in Appalachia, in the Eastern Highland Rim area of Kentucky and Tennessee.

The firm says the project is a collaboration with “business owners, pastors, and other community leaders.”

The website offers the chance to join a resident waitlist, although the development’s precise location may not be announced until 2025.

Joshua Abbotoy, Managing Director of the New Founding organization, hinted at the community’s leadership being predominantly Protestant Christians, seeking local political influence to serve as a blueprint for state-level power, per the Guardian.

In a video interview to promote the project, Abbotoy said: “The whole point of it is to plant a flag and say this small town is where our people are gathering. And the question is: who is going to grab the land? Is it going to be good, based people who want to build something inspiring that’s culturally authentic to the region’s history? Or is it going to be Bill Gates and BlackRock and hippies from California?”

Land offerings associated with the HRP reveal a potential steep premium for living in this ideological enclave, with little apparent improvement to the land, the Guardian reports.

The community is being promoted as a means to “spearhead the revival of the region,” per the Guardian.

The far-right has an “emotional need for a ‘safe space’,” wrote Katherine Stewart, author of “The Power Worshippers,” a key book on Christian nationalism, per the Guardian.