⚠️ Warning: This post is a long one. If you're the type who taps out after 140 characters, now's your chance to bail. But if you're curious about how a group of Christian nationalists, crypto bros, and aspiring theocrats are trying to reboot America from rural Tennessee using a weird blend of Bible verses and blockchain... well, buckle up.

There’s something deeply American about the desire to start over. Our country was founded by religious zealots looking to escape the corruption of the Old World. Over the years, we’ve seen communes, cults, and libertarian enclaves try their hand at utopia—from the Shakers to Jonestown to Peter Thiel’s seasteading fever dreams.

Now? We’ve got the Highland Rim Project.

This isn’t just another real estate grift or prepper compound. It’s the unholy spawn of Christian Dominionism and Silicon Valley futurism, setting up shop in the rolling hills of Jackson County, Tennessee. Their plan? Use religion, crypto, and a healthy dose of "parallel economy" rhetoric to build a community where liberalism goes to die.

Let’s meet the principals of this live-action LARP gone serious.

Isker is a Reformed pastor, father of six, and the kind of guy who sees drag queen story hours as signs of the End Times. He made headlines by leaving Minnesota because, he claimed, schools there might put his autistic son in a dress without his permission. This was a lie popularized by Donald Trump and absolutely unsupported by facts (NBC).

So off he went to Gainesboro, TN—a quiet Appalachian town of about 1,000 souls—to found an invite-only church and start building his own Kingdom of God (and probably a country club).

He’s also the co-author of Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide for Taking Dominion and Discipling Nations, which is exactly as subtle as it sounds. His sermons preach Christian domination over the culture, and his social media is a delightful hellscape of antisemitism, misogyny, and xenophobia. Gems include calling the U.S. a "gynocracy," trashing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and referring to Indian people as "cow worshippers" (Mother Jones).

What’s terrifying isn’t just that this guy is saying the quiet parts loud—it’s that he’s building a community to live them out.

Meet the money man. Abbotoy is a Harvard-educated lawyer who co-founded the Highland Rim Project’s real estate arm, Ridge Runner. He’s also a managing director of New Founding—a Texas-based Christian nationalist venture firm that wants to fund a "parallel economy" for the American right.

Abbotoy says he prefers the term "charter community" over "network state" (more on that in a sec), but the vibe is the same: build a gated ideological paradise in the hills and sell it to people fed up with the rest of America.

He’s already bought up hundreds of acres and sold around 40 parcels, with homes priced from $30k to $300k (Religion News Service).

Oh, and he thinks America might need a Protestant version of Franco. Yes, that Franco. The Spanish fascist dictator. When asked about it, he didn’t deny it—he just replied, “lol you’re such a hack” (Mother Jones).

Fischer is the founder of New Founding, the venture capital firm underwriting this little Christian crypto-kingdom. He’s a Harvard Law grad too, former private equity guy, and current chairman of American Reformer, a think-tanky blog for Protestant nationalism.

Fischer thinks the Constitution is dead, the Enlightenment is overrated, and we should bring back public floggings (not kidding) (American Reformer).

He’s also cozy with Silicon Valley. New Founding has received backing from tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, and Fischer has ties to Peter Thiel’s orbit via investments in charter city projects like Pronomos Capital (Wired).

To Fischer, Christian enclaves aren’t some retreat from the world. They’re beta tests for theocracy. And if they work? Expect to see franchises popping up nationwide.

The intellectual godfather of this idea is Balaji Srinivasan, a libertarian tech bro who thinks countries are old news and we should all form "network states"—online communities that eventually acquire land and self-governance. His book The Network State is a bestseller on Amazon, and it lays out how you can build a nation with a Discord server and enough crypto (Balajis.com).

The Highland Rim crowd loves this. Take the separatist impulse of Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option, smash it into Balaji’s techno-libertarianism, and you get Appalachian Jesuscoinville.

They even talk openly about using digital governance, crypto-based economies, and decentralized infrastructure to run their future towns (New Founding).

But lurking just beneath this techno-utopian sheen is the influence of another dark philosopher of the new right: Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug. Yarvin, a central figure in the "neoreactionary" (NRx) movement, has long advocated for post-democratic governance, tech-savvy monarchies, and the idea that liberal democracy is a failed operating system ripe for a reboot. His writings have heavily influenced figures like Peter Thiel—and by extension, projects like this. The overlap in ideology is clear: disdain for democracy, belief in hierarchies ordained by tradition or coding prowess, and a desire to create parallel structures that render the old system obsolete.

In this light, the Highland Rim experiment starts to look less like a quirky Christian subdivision and more like a beta test for Yarvin's dream of "startup governments"—where exit, not voice, is the citizen’s only real power.

This isn’t the first time Americans have tried to build intentional communities. There were the Shakers, the Oneida commune, the Mormons heading to Utah, and more recently, Doug Wilson’s Calvinist compound in Moscow, Idaho.

But there are darker echoes too.

Isker and his pals are saying things that sound eerily close to Christian Identity theology—the racist belief that white people are the true Israelites. C. Jay Engel, a co-organizer and podcast co-host, has said he wants to ensure the "domination and pre-eminence of European derived peoples" and publicly mourns the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Mother Jones).

You don’t have to squint hard to see shades of Aryan Nations or the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord compounds of the 1980s. The difference? These guys wear Patagonia and use Substack.

Not everyone in Jackson County is thrilled. Local Republicans and business owners have gone on the record saying they’re concerned, scared, or flat-out appalled. One county GOP chair told a Nashville news crew: "Mainly, people are scared" (NewsChannel5).

And it’s not hard to see why. When outsiders show up with a plan to build a parallel society, citing a desire to roll back civil rights and institute patriarchal governance... yeah, maybe check the fine print before signing up for the HOA.

The Highland Rim project is the blueprint. If it works, they replicate it across red-state America: autonomous communities, self-selected citizens, and their own rules. It’s a slow-motion revolution—building Christian enclaves one homestead at a time.

They’re counting on political wind at their backs. Trump’s talked about building "Freedom Cities" on federal land. The Frontier Foundation—a group with ties to New Founding—wrote a memo asking him to do just that. These communities would be exempt from many federal regulations, effectively functioning like private fiefdoms (Frontier Foundation).

If that sounds insane, it’s because it is. But it’s also very real, and it's attracting real money, real voters, and real political clout.

This isn’t a joke. It sounds absurd because it is. But the people behind this aren’t laughing—they’re organizing. They’re buying land. They’re founding churches, forming alliances with think tanks, and raising money from tech billionaires.

Christian nationalism is no longer just a hashtag—it’s got a ZIP code.

And while it’s tempting to dismiss it all as a bizarre cosplay for post-libertarian theology nerds and failed crypto grifters, the Highland Rim Project shows us what happens when those people actually start building.

Because in 2025, the revolution might not be televised. It might just be livestreamed from a county commission meeting in rural Tennessee.

🧵 Like what you just read? Want more strange dispatches from the American fringe? Hit that subscribe button and follow along. This rabbit hole is deep, and I’m already digging.