I have been working on this for a few years now, researching and planning. I am currently working and saving. My plan is to buy raw land to build a fortified farmstead with a motte and bailey castle, a mead hall, and a library. As far as a binding principle, my approach is to find men who share my heritage, more kith than kin. I can trace my family back over a thousand years and still further my ancestors over 4,000 years. 100% Western Europe. My American progenitor arrived at Jamestown colony in 1623. Another was a companion of the legendary English outlaw Adam Bell in the 15th century similar to Robin Hood. We were on the winning side at the battle of Hastings as cavalry and are featured on the Bayeaux tapestry. Before that we were vikings with Rolo and became a household on the north coast of Brittany known as the horselords of Rohan. Before that we were known as Frisians, the children of the goddess FRYA. We were never defeated by the Romans who feared us. We were farmer-soldiers, sailors and traders.
The only reason I am going off on this tangent about my heritage is because it is incredibly rich and I hope it inspires others to investigate their own family history. You never know what you might find. BTW, Louis L’Amour did this for inspiration for his Sackett series and “The Walking Drum”. He and I are kith. The bond of blood is stronger than any other and is what I plan to use as my “binder”.
I have lots more to say about this subject of rekindling our culture from the ground up…
I understand the principle and am aware of the project. It has been ineffective at forming a functional ethnos on which to build. Take a look at one of my earlier articles and send me a DM. I'd be happy to have a discussion on the topic:
Very cool stuff. In the future the community will not just have affordable living as a carrot, but also physical security and other substitutions for state services. South Africanization will continue. I think that to a certain extent that community is created through necessity, and since people can get by without community by being a producer-consumer unit in an urban area that's what they do, but as state services fail this will not longer be comfortable and more desirable people will actively look to fund/be apart something like this.
1) Are people going to VN for this? Immigration there is extremely restrictive last I checked, and if you are not yourself Viet Kieu, or some highly needed profession like engineer or doctor, I do not see how you'd get residency, as foreigner, at all. What I observed there, while visiting, was local, organic community, aided and abetted by a fairly hostile government: the religious (Catholics, Buddhists, Cao Dai, and protestants), faced steep obstacles to relocation and prestigious jobs, so... for fifty or sixty years they had mostly stayed in the old hometown... which, interestingly, means the hometown is a vibrant and wonderfully functional community. That is changing in recent years as the official discrimination lets up, and everyone is becoming more prosperous. Remains to be seen if they can hold onto the good parts.
2) This sounds very reminiscent of the Benedict Option talk from some years back. Which I was sympathetic to at the time... but seeing it in action a little bit, eh, it's not a source of optimism tbh. You can't, actually, build a community from scratch out of a collection of well-heeled white-collar families, which was basically what that amounted to, in the end. Good communities do, sometimes, form around churches, church schools, and monasteries. It is depressingly rare for that to happen around churches or monasteries located in affordable neighborhoods. It may be possible, but I have not seen it, and we have never been in a position to afford the buy-in costs of such a community. If every house within half a mile of the church costs $250k+, that's not Christian community you're building, it's a very exclusive economic enclave full of people who cannot afford to have non-mainstream political opinions, because their jobs depend on fitting in with whatever the PMC is up to. People think they can maintain subversive insides while 'fitting in' at work, but... it doesn't work that way really. Actions are not strictly downstream of thought. It's a two-way street: your thoughts will eventually rearrange themselves to suit your actions, where there's a mismatch.
3) In terms of building such a community around anything *other than* a shared church/temple/religion... I'm not at all sure it can be done. I notice The Farm in Tennessee is still operating, but then... the founder Gaskin *was* in fact a religious leader. It was a kooky religion, but it was sufficient to keep the community going. Most such experiments failed.
All that said, I don't think it's impossible. I could see it coalescing, say, around a mission church in a ghetto neighborhood (your chinatown model), but it'd take some very brave souls to make a go of it. When it comes to rural enclaves... the problem is always jobs. I've poked at this one a *lot* because I am an avid gardener, and would love a little space to expand that into small livestock. The math just doesn't work. There's nowhere we can afford an acre, and still be close enough to both an appropriate church parish and a job that can support us. I hope that changes as our church expands-- the growth these last few years has been nothing short of explosive-- but even with that growth, it's going to take some years for us to even graduate enough priests to take on the mission parishes we already have. That's a decades project, not a soon project.
The Hasidic Jews basically follow this model in New York, and one can hardly call Judaism a religious system. More of an ethno-religious enclave structured around mutual community goals. I think the problems you're pointing out are all bound up in leadership. White collar families can structure a community well, but only for a single generation or so. Blue collar families structure communities very well, but don't have the wealth to enforce their will.
What you need is leadership that can act as a guiding force to these types of organizations. Groups like the Hasidic Jews, Mormon offshoots and the Amish all have a type of "council of elders" that maintains structured leadership. A single leader dropping the million dollars to purchase the property and organizing it as an llc will allow a larger group of people to enter with a lower barrier of entry. The current cost of living is so high that cheap cost-of-living for the rest of your life is a substantial motivator for younger generations: going from "I could never afford kids" to "I live in a community with cheap rent that encourages kids" is a radical difference.
Well paid white-collar jobs aren't as available in rural areas, but wfh, job stacking a la Walt Bismark, and other methods are much more attainable now.
The net project is multi-generational, but if you've got a few million dollars ready to go, and are interested in investing in a project like this, now is a great time to start. You also have to bear the leadership responsibilities... which one presumes would be generational. In the short-run it's a huge investment. In the long-run, your kids get to be barons/dukes one day, and the founding stock of your community network will be knights. The Republic that is the US won't last forever, and as it transitions, community leaders are very likely to take on a form of neo-feudal titles.
I think it is well worth the experiment, and wish luck to anybody making a go of it :)
But there are some known pitfalls, and it behooves anybody looking into it, to carefully weigh all the ways that various communes and intentional communities fail, and try to learn from those.
Interesting, I've been entertaining similar ideas if in Japan, France or Bulgaria. I've my eye though on some land and a house in Japan, but don't have much cash but was thinking of going out there to teach ESL, and to transition to FSL (to get more cash) next year and then to sink the money into a house and land in a countryside town.
Good point, it’s why I’ve considered Europe problem is you need boatloads of money to move out there, and one has to navigate their bloody bureaucracy. Still its better than staying in Canada.
Interesting model. I've been kicking around the idea for a dozen or more years to buy 100 ac of arable land and recruit 10 or 12 families to buy in and build smallish homes around a village center model utilizing the commonly held land for homesteading and recreation.
Much care must be taken to avoid a Lord of the Flys scenario.
If you can front the initial cost you'll be able to find people interested in going in on the item. You'll need to provide assurances that they'll be able to act independent of tyrannical oversight. That's why my proposed model has the founder owning a significant minority stake, but a minority stake. That's how you avoid the lord-of-the-flies scenario.
Something like this is EXACTLY what is needed to rebuild an actual society!
Leftism has been able to essentially hammer the world with the civilizational equivalent of nerve damage... this is an excellent way to start curing that damage.
You might be interested in the work that AARVOLL is doing with building an intentional community in the Ozarks. Logistically and philosophically similar to much of what you've said in this article. 😄
“Inclusive Sustainability for Western Maryland” will get a lot more permits than “Old Line State White Power Front”. And why shouldn’t we use the Left’s meaningless rhetorical terms?
It will also be important to have a female spokesperson on staff who can rattle off party line nonsense, in case questions are asked.
Definitely helpful. They're entirely disingenuous with their naming conventions. No reason not to follow their lead. Though maybe turn it down a notch given how thoroughly this new administration is cleaning house.
Great effort. Lots of people say they want to do this (sometimes I'm one of them), but the specifics of how it COULD be done are scant. This is a kick in the butt to think more concretely.
It's really hard to do something the first time. You've got to have a clear vision and do a lot of testing.
Based on observations, I think that the main issue that folks get stuck on is that they're very libertarian-minded. That is, they want to agglomerate a bunch of people that want to be left alone and do so with a minimal hierarchy. Of course, getting a bunch of guys to collectively throw 100k into a pot while that group are libertarian individualists is hard.
1 wealthy dude building an estate with a half-dozen "knights" who bought into the project is a lot more tenable. People prefer defined hierarchies. The libertarian crowd won't be into it, but they don't make great neighbors anyway. Establishing an upfront system with defined roles is critical: "this person is in charge and any issues are his fault" is socially palatable.
Great post! The part that always seems hardest to me is finding other fathers/families willing to do something like this. People are very invested in individualism and its trappings plus I think there's a lot of fear that something like this can't last. But, as you say, building independent communities is not about a dollar ROI or a guarantee of success but it's own necessity.
I think the most important part is for there to be a strong leader at the center who puts in the largest stake. In doing so he becomes a grounding for the community in a way that a simple group of semi-egalitarian individuals can'. Structured hierarchy is something that all successful intentional communities seem to have in common.
The charisma and cash at least... but yeah. I can't imagine a group successfully putting one together any other way. Cash can be 50% of the total cost, but probably no less.
Awesome. I remember discussing this in our podcast together. Do you know of any groups currently doing this? And, any suggestions about how to meet like-minded individuals (or couples) that you could start this project with? It seems that the level of trust needs to be that of a historically tribal community, which (I see you've brought up Dunbar's number) often are simply extended families - as are immigrant networks. Even close friends might get cold feet, or might not pull their weight etc. Have you thought about this aspect of the issue? It's something I wonder how to solve a lot, but haven't got sufficient answers.
You need the startup capital and you need to be friends with young couples whose employment is mobile (either because they're in the trades, or because they're work from home professionals, or because their job results in a lot of regional travel). If you have good neighbors or friends that fit the profile, that's a good start.
Cost of living/cost of property helps a lot. There's a lot of people who wish they'd one day be able to have home but recognize that their chonky down payment, (even 50k or 60k) would never be enough. So they're looking for alternatives. If you walk up and say "we'll start a non-profit for ourselves, you donate 50k, i'll donate 500k, and we can get another guy to donate 50k, then we can run with it" that's likely enough.
In terms of establishing trust, the easiest way is through micro-cultures. If you're in a firearms micro-culture or an amateur radio micro-culture or a hot-rodding micro-culture those are very like-minded people by definition. Finding the right people in a microculture is a big ask, but if you can find people willing (and able) to move their families around they make excellent recruits. Assuming you've already been in those micro-cultures for a year or two, you've already built up a tremendous amount of social capital with those people. If you say "hey guys, I'm putting a half million dollars into an apartment building in X city. If you move here, I'll sell you a share of the building and you get cheap rent forever." You're likely to get a couple of people onboard. You've already effectively vetted those people over the last few years and they've already vetted you.
In an ideal world you scoop up all the married couples from a discord server, and provide every one with a place to live. You can probably pull 20k or more from each prospective member as long as they're given voting shares in the corporate entity that controls the territory. Nothing is free, but if you have a good portion of the up-front cost covered, the best recruitment location is micro-cultures you're already heavily embedded in. The fact that the Woke Left has made micro-cultures insular and distrustful of outsiders (some one might leak the group-chat after all) means that they're all already 3/4 of the way towards the type of clan-community we're talking about building.
These are all great suggestions. I would guess 'The Big Don' aspect is incredibly important too. Many people might be attracted to this move, but might be integrated with society (job, friends, etc), on a level that would make it difficult to move ... unless a charismatic leader, with resources, as you suggest, showed the long-long-long term benefits (and short) of such a move. In many ways, it would be akin to starting a cult - hopefully without the raping and the pillaging.
My intuition is that online groups, while providing opportunity to meet people more like you, would be secondary to people who you already know in person. Personally, if I'm going to struggle to trust someone to have the balls and follow through that I know in person, I don't know I'll trust someone online. The trust issue is big, which - returning to the cult idea - you might need a social institution first, like a constitution or quasi-religious document - that binds all members together as if they were blood, like a masonic lodge or some other secret society, and prevents 'outward drift' of members and possible betrayal, which could be catastrophic.
I suspect it's 50/50. Online microcultures are ideal to draw from *IF* you can fined married men who are willing/able to join you. This goes double for microcultures that produce useful skills. Hot-rodding car guys. Machinists. Guys who want to homestead. That kind of thing. Your buddies in your micro-culture (say, a discord server or some variation thereof) are already higher trust than you are with your neighbors. Partially because anonymity has permitted you to be truly honest with each other when you first met.
You do need a social institution for sure. That's something you can develop over time. Starting off with a corporate legal entity will help get things off the ground: "here's the founding document, the bylaws, and the legal non-profit I've started, let's use this to build a few houses together" is a great opener. Especially if you've already got the few hundred grand investment sitting on it.
It will absolutely be hard to *start* but you only need 3 or 4 other people (families) to start with, including you. A demonstrated success in it already existing will be enough to get a more folks on board.
I think you just have to look at immigrant populations, like the one's you suggested, for the 'social institution' aspect to work. All members, in some way, either consciously or unconsciously, have to view such an in-group as the level upon which they will compete with everybody else. Not your current nation, not your current ethnicity, or even your religion (though all of these are good 'binders', they're not enough). Though, an 'enclave' might be one that is incredibly peace-loving and harmonious, their goals are still inward - and will be for centuries. Breaking the atheistic-individualist mentality we have in the west will be difficult - though I wouldn't surprised if it is more difficult to break in New Zealand, because of how atheistic we are, compared to Americans. Thinking further, I wonder how religiosity (because it predicts collectivism) influences this whole thing - like, is a religion necessary?
It definitely seems possible in the US. Especially if you're able to use a microculture as your jumping off point. If you have 4 families of X microculture in the enclave, and invite 1 or 2 others who are neighbors but not embedded, the new arrivals are likely to adapt to the insular microculture and become part of it.
I suspect that religion isn't necessary, but it should be encouraged. Both on the larger part of broad religions like Christian religion and on the smaller part of (even as a meme) describing the enclave as having a chosen spirit, god, or saint as a spiritual cornerstone.
Even if the first-generation does it as a meme, the second generation will be able to take it seriously having grown up with a "we are the people of X" as a fundamental aspect of their character. Even in its short-form this is really at least a 2-generation project.
Thinking about online micro-cultures for a moment - I wonder if you could create the enclave online, the sharing funds, the creation of a 'micro-idelogy', and other necessities, all before you decide to find a locale. If could speed up a lot of early-hassle.
Passport Bro's have options here. Get the girl first, then work on community development after that, or find an intentional community. I get along well with the labor class, but am not born into it. Developing the intentional community requires an individual as patriarch with a substantial initial financial investment. An individual with resources and an appreciation for the way in which tight communities are resistant to cultural corrosion.
I'm interested. This implies you've already managed to front the money? It's a lot easier to build something like this in a hierarchy than a mutual aid compact. I find it unlikely most modern families will be comfortable ceding their transportation methods to a group consensus: who pays insurance? Who takes which cars and when? what are the rules for smoking in a car? Probably better to allow people as much traditional autonomy as possible.
DM me though, I'm interested in chatting about your setup.
Excellent post.
I have been working on this for a few years now, researching and planning. I am currently working and saving. My plan is to buy raw land to build a fortified farmstead with a motte and bailey castle, a mead hall, and a library. As far as a binding principle, my approach is to find men who share my heritage, more kith than kin. I can trace my family back over a thousand years and still further my ancestors over 4,000 years. 100% Western Europe. My American progenitor arrived at Jamestown colony in 1623. Another was a companion of the legendary English outlaw Adam Bell in the 15th century similar to Robin Hood. We were on the winning side at the battle of Hastings as cavalry and are featured on the Bayeaux tapestry. Before that we were vikings with Rolo and became a household on the north coast of Brittany known as the horselords of Rohan. Before that we were known as Frisians, the children of the goddess FRYA. We were never defeated by the Romans who feared us. We were farmer-soldiers, sailors and traders.
The only reason I am going off on this tangent about my heritage is because it is incredibly rich and I hope it inspires others to investigate their own family history. You never know what you might find. BTW, Louis L’Amour did this for inspiration for his Sackett series and “The Walking Drum”. He and I are kith. The bond of blood is stronger than any other and is what I plan to use as my “binder”.
I have lots more to say about this subject of rekindling our culture from the ground up…
We Are Working At That Very Thing…
https://northwestfront.info/
I understand the principle and am aware of the project. It has been ineffective at forming a functional ethnos on which to build. Take a look at one of my earlier articles and send me a DM. I'd be happy to have a discussion on the topic:
https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/post-faustian-ethnos-identity-and?r=43z8s4
Very cool stuff. In the future the community will not just have affordable living as a carrot, but also physical security and other substitutions for state services. South Africanization will continue. I think that to a certain extent that community is created through necessity, and since people can get by without community by being a producer-consumer unit in an urban area that's what they do, but as state services fail this will not longer be comfortable and more desirable people will actively look to fund/be apart something like this.
Intelligent individuals are already looking this way.
I used "more" as in a larger quantity
Yea people in LA are getting a taste of what's in store for everyone...
Precisely. If this happens again I imagine that those rich folks will join a gated community with private fire and police services.
1) Are people going to VN for this? Immigration there is extremely restrictive last I checked, and if you are not yourself Viet Kieu, or some highly needed profession like engineer or doctor, I do not see how you'd get residency, as foreigner, at all. What I observed there, while visiting, was local, organic community, aided and abetted by a fairly hostile government: the religious (Catholics, Buddhists, Cao Dai, and protestants), faced steep obstacles to relocation and prestigious jobs, so... for fifty or sixty years they had mostly stayed in the old hometown... which, interestingly, means the hometown is a vibrant and wonderfully functional community. That is changing in recent years as the official discrimination lets up, and everyone is becoming more prosperous. Remains to be seen if they can hold onto the good parts.
2) This sounds very reminiscent of the Benedict Option talk from some years back. Which I was sympathetic to at the time... but seeing it in action a little bit, eh, it's not a source of optimism tbh. You can't, actually, build a community from scratch out of a collection of well-heeled white-collar families, which was basically what that amounted to, in the end. Good communities do, sometimes, form around churches, church schools, and monasteries. It is depressingly rare for that to happen around churches or monasteries located in affordable neighborhoods. It may be possible, but I have not seen it, and we have never been in a position to afford the buy-in costs of such a community. If every house within half a mile of the church costs $250k+, that's not Christian community you're building, it's a very exclusive economic enclave full of people who cannot afford to have non-mainstream political opinions, because their jobs depend on fitting in with whatever the PMC is up to. People think they can maintain subversive insides while 'fitting in' at work, but... it doesn't work that way really. Actions are not strictly downstream of thought. It's a two-way street: your thoughts will eventually rearrange themselves to suit your actions, where there's a mismatch.
3) In terms of building such a community around anything *other than* a shared church/temple/religion... I'm not at all sure it can be done. I notice The Farm in Tennessee is still operating, but then... the founder Gaskin *was* in fact a religious leader. It was a kooky religion, but it was sufficient to keep the community going. Most such experiments failed.
All that said, I don't think it's impossible. I could see it coalescing, say, around a mission church in a ghetto neighborhood (your chinatown model), but it'd take some very brave souls to make a go of it. When it comes to rural enclaves... the problem is always jobs. I've poked at this one a *lot* because I am an avid gardener, and would love a little space to expand that into small livestock. The math just doesn't work. There's nowhere we can afford an acre, and still be close enough to both an appropriate church parish and a job that can support us. I hope that changes as our church expands-- the growth these last few years has been nothing short of explosive-- but even with that growth, it's going to take some years for us to even graduate enough priests to take on the mission parishes we already have. That's a decades project, not a soon project.
The Hasidic Jews basically follow this model in New York, and one can hardly call Judaism a religious system. More of an ethno-religious enclave structured around mutual community goals. I think the problems you're pointing out are all bound up in leadership. White collar families can structure a community well, but only for a single generation or so. Blue collar families structure communities very well, but don't have the wealth to enforce their will.
What you need is leadership that can act as a guiding force to these types of organizations. Groups like the Hasidic Jews, Mormon offshoots and the Amish all have a type of "council of elders" that maintains structured leadership. A single leader dropping the million dollars to purchase the property and organizing it as an llc will allow a larger group of people to enter with a lower barrier of entry. The current cost of living is so high that cheap cost-of-living for the rest of your life is a substantial motivator for younger generations: going from "I could never afford kids" to "I live in a community with cheap rent that encourages kids" is a radical difference.
Well paid white-collar jobs aren't as available in rural areas, but wfh, job stacking a la Walt Bismark, and other methods are much more attainable now.
The net project is multi-generational, but if you've got a few million dollars ready to go, and are interested in investing in a project like this, now is a great time to start. You also have to bear the leadership responsibilities... which one presumes would be generational. In the short-run it's a huge investment. In the long-run, your kids get to be barons/dukes one day, and the founding stock of your community network will be knights. The Republic that is the US won't last forever, and as it transitions, community leaders are very likely to take on a form of neo-feudal titles.
I think it is well worth the experiment, and wish luck to anybody making a go of it :)
But there are some known pitfalls, and it behooves anybody looking into it, to carefully weigh all the ways that various communes and intentional communities fail, and try to learn from those.
Interesting, I've been entertaining similar ideas if in Japan, France or Bulgaria. I've my eye though on some land and a house in Japan, but don't have much cash but was thinking of going out there to teach ESL, and to transition to FSL (to get more cash) next year and then to sink the money into a house and land in a countryside town.
Japan isn't a terrible idea, but I don't really want to raise a family if the kids are going to be forced into Japanese work-culture.
Good point, it’s why I’ve considered Europe problem is you need boatloads of money to move out there, and one has to navigate their bloody bureaucracy. Still its better than staying in Canada.
I think the hinterlands of the US are an optimal position right now. Argentina is also looking very good.
There’s the Scottish Isles also (north and the western ones).
Europe is going to be far more unstable than the US, and that'll translate to radical trade lane instability unfortunately I think.
The Benedict Option
Interesting model. I've been kicking around the idea for a dozen or more years to buy 100 ac of arable land and recruit 10 or 12 families to buy in and build smallish homes around a village center model utilizing the commonly held land for homesteading and recreation.
Much care must be taken to avoid a Lord of the Flys scenario.
If you can front the initial cost you'll be able to find people interested in going in on the item. You'll need to provide assurances that they'll be able to act independent of tyrannical oversight. That's why my proposed model has the founder owning a significant minority stake, but a minority stake. That's how you avoid the lord-of-the-flies scenario.
Thank you for writing this.
Something like this is EXACTLY what is needed to rebuild an actual society!
Leftism has been able to essentially hammer the world with the civilizational equivalent of nerve damage... this is an excellent way to start curing that damage.
Hope that it helps people see a vision of how to go about rejecting globalized socio-economic progressivism.
Excellent
You might be interested in the work that AARVOLL is doing with building an intentional community in the Ozarks. Logistically and philosophically similar to much of what you've said in this article. 😄
Thanks, I'll look into it.
I like your emphasis on how important names are.
“Inclusive Sustainability for Western Maryland” will get a lot more permits than “Old Line State White Power Front”. And why shouldn’t we use the Left’s meaningless rhetorical terms?
It will also be important to have a female spokesperson on staff who can rattle off party line nonsense, in case questions are asked.
Definitely helpful. They're entirely disingenuous with their naming conventions. No reason not to follow their lead. Though maybe turn it down a notch given how thoroughly this new administration is cleaning house.
Great effort. Lots of people say they want to do this (sometimes I'm one of them), but the specifics of how it COULD be done are scant. This is a kick in the butt to think more concretely.
It's really hard to do something the first time. You've got to have a clear vision and do a lot of testing.
Based on observations, I think that the main issue that folks get stuck on is that they're very libertarian-minded. That is, they want to agglomerate a bunch of people that want to be left alone and do so with a minimal hierarchy. Of course, getting a bunch of guys to collectively throw 100k into a pot while that group are libertarian individualists is hard.
1 wealthy dude building an estate with a half-dozen "knights" who bought into the project is a lot more tenable. People prefer defined hierarchies. The libertarian crowd won't be into it, but they don't make great neighbors anyway. Establishing an upfront system with defined roles is critical: "this person is in charge and any issues are his fault" is socially palatable.
Great post! The part that always seems hardest to me is finding other fathers/families willing to do something like this. People are very invested in individualism and its trappings plus I think there's a lot of fear that something like this can't last. But, as you say, building independent communities is not about a dollar ROI or a guarantee of success but it's own necessity.
I think the most important part is for there to be a strong leader at the center who puts in the largest stake. In doing so he becomes a grounding for the community in a way that a simple group of semi-egalitarian individuals can'. Structured hierarchy is something that all successful intentional communities seem to have in common.
someone with the status, charisma and the cash then.
The charisma and cash at least... but yeah. I can't imagine a group successfully putting one together any other way. Cash can be 50% of the total cost, but probably no less.
Awesome. I remember discussing this in our podcast together. Do you know of any groups currently doing this? And, any suggestions about how to meet like-minded individuals (or couples) that you could start this project with? It seems that the level of trust needs to be that of a historically tribal community, which (I see you've brought up Dunbar's number) often are simply extended families - as are immigrant networks. Even close friends might get cold feet, or might not pull their weight etc. Have you thought about this aspect of the issue? It's something I wonder how to solve a lot, but haven't got sufficient answers.
You need the startup capital and you need to be friends with young couples whose employment is mobile (either because they're in the trades, or because they're work from home professionals, or because their job results in a lot of regional travel). If you have good neighbors or friends that fit the profile, that's a good start.
Cost of living/cost of property helps a lot. There's a lot of people who wish they'd one day be able to have home but recognize that their chonky down payment, (even 50k or 60k) would never be enough. So they're looking for alternatives. If you walk up and say "we'll start a non-profit for ourselves, you donate 50k, i'll donate 500k, and we can get another guy to donate 50k, then we can run with it" that's likely enough.
In terms of establishing trust, the easiest way is through micro-cultures. If you're in a firearms micro-culture or an amateur radio micro-culture or a hot-rodding micro-culture those are very like-minded people by definition. Finding the right people in a microculture is a big ask, but if you can find people willing (and able) to move their families around they make excellent recruits. Assuming you've already been in those micro-cultures for a year or two, you've already built up a tremendous amount of social capital with those people. If you say "hey guys, I'm putting a half million dollars into an apartment building in X city. If you move here, I'll sell you a share of the building and you get cheap rent forever." You're likely to get a couple of people onboard. You've already effectively vetted those people over the last few years and they've already vetted you.
In an ideal world you scoop up all the married couples from a discord server, and provide every one with a place to live. You can probably pull 20k or more from each prospective member as long as they're given voting shares in the corporate entity that controls the territory. Nothing is free, but if you have a good portion of the up-front cost covered, the best recruitment location is micro-cultures you're already heavily embedded in. The fact that the Woke Left has made micro-cultures insular and distrustful of outsiders (some one might leak the group-chat after all) means that they're all already 3/4 of the way towards the type of clan-community we're talking about building.
These are all great suggestions. I would guess 'The Big Don' aspect is incredibly important too. Many people might be attracted to this move, but might be integrated with society (job, friends, etc), on a level that would make it difficult to move ... unless a charismatic leader, with resources, as you suggest, showed the long-long-long term benefits (and short) of such a move. In many ways, it would be akin to starting a cult - hopefully without the raping and the pillaging.
My intuition is that online groups, while providing opportunity to meet people more like you, would be secondary to people who you already know in person. Personally, if I'm going to struggle to trust someone to have the balls and follow through that I know in person, I don't know I'll trust someone online. The trust issue is big, which - returning to the cult idea - you might need a social institution first, like a constitution or quasi-religious document - that binds all members together as if they were blood, like a masonic lodge or some other secret society, and prevents 'outward drift' of members and possible betrayal, which could be catastrophic.
I suspect it's 50/50. Online microcultures are ideal to draw from *IF* you can fined married men who are willing/able to join you. This goes double for microcultures that produce useful skills. Hot-rodding car guys. Machinists. Guys who want to homestead. That kind of thing. Your buddies in your micro-culture (say, a discord server or some variation thereof) are already higher trust than you are with your neighbors. Partially because anonymity has permitted you to be truly honest with each other when you first met.
You do need a social institution for sure. That's something you can develop over time. Starting off with a corporate legal entity will help get things off the ground: "here's the founding document, the bylaws, and the legal non-profit I've started, let's use this to build a few houses together" is a great opener. Especially if you've already got the few hundred grand investment sitting on it.
It will absolutely be hard to *start* but you only need 3 or 4 other people (families) to start with, including you. A demonstrated success in it already existing will be enough to get a more folks on board.
I think you just have to look at immigrant populations, like the one's you suggested, for the 'social institution' aspect to work. All members, in some way, either consciously or unconsciously, have to view such an in-group as the level upon which they will compete with everybody else. Not your current nation, not your current ethnicity, or even your religion (though all of these are good 'binders', they're not enough). Though, an 'enclave' might be one that is incredibly peace-loving and harmonious, their goals are still inward - and will be for centuries. Breaking the atheistic-individualist mentality we have in the west will be difficult - though I wouldn't surprised if it is more difficult to break in New Zealand, because of how atheistic we are, compared to Americans. Thinking further, I wonder how religiosity (because it predicts collectivism) influences this whole thing - like, is a religion necessary?
It definitely seems possible in the US. Especially if you're able to use a microculture as your jumping off point. If you have 4 families of X microculture in the enclave, and invite 1 or 2 others who are neighbors but not embedded, the new arrivals are likely to adapt to the insular microculture and become part of it.
I suspect that religion isn't necessary, but it should be encouraged. Both on the larger part of broad religions like Christian religion and on the smaller part of (even as a meme) describing the enclave as having a chosen spirit, god, or saint as a spiritual cornerstone.
Even if the first-generation does it as a meme, the second generation will be able to take it seriously having grown up with a "we are the people of X" as a fundamental aspect of their character. Even in its short-form this is really at least a 2-generation project.
Thinking about online micro-cultures for a moment - I wonder if you could create the enclave online, the sharing funds, the creation of a 'micro-idelogy', and other necessities, all before you decide to find a locale. If could speed up a lot of early-hassle.
Come Home White Volk…https://northwestfront.info/
Passport Bro's have options here. Get the girl first, then work on community development after that, or find an intentional community. I get along well with the labor class, but am not born into it. Developing the intentional community requires an individual as patriarch with a substantial initial financial investment. An individual with resources and an appreciation for the way in which tight communities are resistant to cultural corrosion.
I'm interested. This implies you've already managed to front the money? It's a lot easier to build something like this in a hierarchy than a mutual aid compact. I find it unlikely most modern families will be comfortable ceding their transportation methods to a group consensus: who pays insurance? Who takes which cars and when? what are the rules for smoking in a car? Probably better to allow people as much traditional autonomy as possible.
DM me though, I'm interested in chatting about your setup.