GAINESBORO, Tenn. (WTVF) — A historian by training, Mark Dudney's interest in Jackson County's past – and its future – is more than just academic.
Dudney is a seventh-generation Jackson County resident.
His ancestors were Gainesboro's first family.
He often wonders how he would tell his father about the out-of-state investors who are now trying to turn Jackson County into a Christian nationalist haven and, ultimately, to redefine what it means to be an American.
Sitting in the home that once belonged to his parents, Dudney imagined pulling up a chair alongside his dad to break the news.
Dr. E.M. Dudney was an Air Force flight surgeon who served as an aide to President Dwight Eisenhower.
"You remember how you and mom taught us words like love, forgiveness, and compassion?" he would ask.
Then, the son would continue. "Well, they use words like dominion and national divorce and multi-generational spiritual warfare. And, lucky us, they've decided to grow their political base out of right here in Jackson County.“
His father, Dudney believes, “would be sick” about what’s happening in the county he loved.
“So, yeah, it's personal to me.”
But for the politically connected investors behind the project, our NewsChannel 5 investigation has now discovered, it’s about business, power and modeling what they describe as an alternative view of America.
In podcast interviews and social media posts reviewed by NewsChannel 5 Investigates over the past three months, the people funding the Christian nationalist effort have said they are targeting the area not only because of its natural beauty and rustic charm, but also because of their ability to exercise political power here.
This comes eight months after NewsChannel 5 Investigates first revealed the plans, focusing on the right-wing podcasters selected as ambassadors for the project.
Andrew Isker and Cjay Engel want to go back to an America before the civil rights movement "ruined everything." They want to kick out legal immigrants even if they became U.S. citizens decades ago. They have hosted antisemitic voices on their podcast. And, if necessary to achieve their goals, they are prepared to accept a Protestant dictator.
Earlier this year, after Tucker Carlson embraced the project, Dudney released a video on social media objecting to the Christian nationalist effort. (Watch below.)
BREAKING: “We stand at a crossroads.”Jackson County residents release a video, featuring public historian Mark Dudney, rebuking the white Christian nationalists looking to establish a foothold in Gainesboro, Tennessee. pic.twitter.com/vXoe9xU8xA
— Phil Williams (@PhilNvestigates) April 2, 2025
"Our hometown is not a test tube for some extremist social experiment,” he said.
Since then, signs have sprung up around the area declaring: “Hate has no place in Jackson County.”
We asked Dudney, "Do you think people here fully appreciate the powerful forces that are involved in this?"
"I think some people do,” he answered. " I think maybe other people just don't like somebody coming in into their home and saying, we're going to plant a flag and build a town right on top of the one that you already have."
Investors want to ‘control the town’
Dallas-based investor Nate Fischer heads the company financing the so-called “Highland Rim Project,” a multimillion-dollar effort in the Upper Cumberland region about 90 minutes northeast of Nashville.
His company, New Founding LLC, promises you can "build the America you want to live in." A sister company, Ridgerunner USA, is also involved in the project.
New Founding appears to have some deep political connections, including to the far-right Claremont Institute. Among its investors is tech billionaire Marc Andreesen. Last year, a New Founding executive also posted a pic of the team with now-Vice President J.D. Vance, referring to him as "our guy." (Fischer originally posted the photo in April 2023.)
"Our goal is something where we actually have, where we actually have the concentration where we can control the town – or, in this case of the people there, it’s a town that’s already values aligned,” Fischer said in a February 2024 podcast interview.
The company's managing partner, Josh Abbotoy, moved to Gainesboro to lead the real estate effort. He claimed in a March 2025 interview, " We currently have thousands of acres and, you know, ultimately aspire to get up to tens of thousands of acres."
Like Fischer, Abbotoy sees a chance for their buyers to gain political power.
“It’s more attainable to get into civic and cultural leadership in a small town. It's more attainable to change the local market to make your presence felt," he explained in a February 2024 podcast.
Here are @NateAFischer, @Byzness and others with @NewFounding and @UsaRidge, talking about their move into Tennessee and how outsiders can gain political power in the communities where they are “planting a flag.” pic.twitter.com/itAa7Y6wQx
— Phil Williams (@PhilNvestigates) July 29, 2025
Internally, the company compared their efforts in Jackson County and surrounding areas to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.
New Founding executives acknowledged in a November 2024 podcast discussion that they once considered calling it “Project Mayflower.”
Mark Dudney's reaction?
“As a local who loves the community, I have an emotional response to it. It feels like an insult to people who lived here, who lived their lives here before."
Neither Abbotoy nor Fischer responded to NewsChannel 5’s requests for comment.
‘Waiting for system to collapse’
Still, what appears to unite the various players in the Christian nationalist project is a belief that society, as we know it, is heading for a collapse and that they need to prepare for it.
Prior to announcing his decision to “partner with” New Founding on the project in Jackson County, podcaster and right-wing pastor Andrew Isker published a book titled "Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide to Taking Dominion & Discipling Nations."
His co-author Andrew Torba started the Gab website that gives a platform to neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists and other extremists.
“In many ways Christian nationalists recognize the sobering reality that the existing secular liberal state cannot continue on the path it is without inevitable self-destruction,” Isker and Torba wrote.
“We are not seeking to take command of a sinking ship, but rather we are building the ark alongside it in preparation for the coming rain.”
Their book calls for building “a parallel Christian society, economy and infrastructure" ready to replace the "failed secular state."
In that new society, "leadership and influential positions must be reserved exclusively for those who call Jesus Christ King."
No Jews or other religions would be allowed.
And they call for taking control of townships, school boards, and counties as a first step and exiting what they call "the beast system completely... lying in wait for their system to collapse."
Fischer, who has called for a "rollback of many elements of mass popular democracy" and suggested that "we should consider alternatives to democracy," also believes America is heading for a cliff.
" I think even [for] those who play it best, it may be extremely painful – depends on how sort of violent the collapse is,” he said in the November 2024 conversation.
In fact, Fischer penned a manifesto – what he called "a strategy for a new founding" – declaring that "coming years will bring turmoil and peril, but also great opportunity" to "shape the direction of Western civilization.”
The Highland Rim Project, he added, is designed to draw “people from our network into a community that will model a distinct way of life aligned with our vision.”
On social media, he has insisted, "national divorce must be on the table.... The only question is whether it happens peacefully."
And he argued that "accelerating the collapse of a destructive regime ... may be productive even if it causes some collateral costs to broader society."
‘Woke right’
"For me, New Founding represents the ability to put infrastructure into actualizing a radical Christian nationalist movement that has a fundamentally different vision for America than America itself,” conservative commentator James Lindsay told NewsChannel 5.
We noted that the company name suggests starting over as a country.
“A new founding – literally," he agreed.
Lindsay is a controversial figure who has faced intense criticism from the left for his critiques of gender theory, as well as so-called critical race theory.
At the same time, he has clashed with Fischer and other members of the New Founding team after he accused the far right of becoming what he calls the “woke right.”
Like he had done with the left, Lindsay pulled off a hoax involving American Reformer – a theology-focused website associated with New Founding – tricking them into publishing a Christian nationalist essay echoing arguments from the Communist Manifesto.
Lindsay calls New Founding’s approach a "dark, doomsday mentality."
"It's about breaking America into communities that don't get along with one another,” he continued.
“We're no longer one nation under God. We're no longer this single federal entity. We're now this hodgepodge of micronations that don't necessarily get along."
Abbotoy, the managing partner of New Founding, himself has tweeted that "America is going to need a Protestant Franco" – in other words, a religious dictator.
Fischer responded, "Civic breakdown always leads to opportunity -- and arguably need -- for [a] strong leader to restore order."
" Yeah, they're fascist,” Lindsay said. “At the end of the day underneath it, I mean, Nate Fisher would object to me calling him a fascist – and maybe he's not. But the substratum of the way that they think is fascist oriented."
Society for American Civic Renewal
Not only do the developers behind the Jackson County project share a political ideology, they are also members of a secretive men-only society, designed to train a generation of far-right Christian leaders to take control when the time comes.
The Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) has a website that touts the notion of seeking a "civilizational renaissance."
Its internal membership documents demand keeping members' names and the group's initiatives secret and developing "a list of potential appointees and hires for an aligned future regime."
In addition, it calls for helping its members with "hiring and promotion" as well as the "award of contracts."
Far-right Indianapolis millionaire Charles Haywood was involved with Fischer in setting up the first SACR chapters. His image appears in the opening sequence for New Founding’s occasional YouTube podcast, and he was featured in at least one episode himself. Haywood has also spoken glowingly on social media about New Founding's business model.
It is not known whether Haywood is an investor in either New Founding generally or the Highland Rim Project specifically. (A spokesperson for Vice President JD Vance denied that he has ever been a SACR member.)
Still, Haywood's views bear great similarities to the doomsday notions of the New Founding crew.
"To say that the future holds chaos and violence is only to make a prediction very similar to ‘the sun will rise in the east tomorrow,’” Haywood said in a September 2023 podcast.
In another, he described himself as a “big fan” of “theories of regime fragility.”
“That is, I am on Team Fragility as opposed to Team Turbo America."
And Haywood has mused about how decisive figures like himself might take control if the future he predicts becomes reality.
"I sometimes believe that I am fated to become a warlord myself,” he said in a July 2022 post on his blog, The Worthy House.
“The key function of a warlord is the short- and long-term protection – military and otherwise – of those who recognize his authority and act, in part at his behest."
‘Fundamentally un-American’
For James Lindsay, it is more proof that the New Founding figures and their allies are betting against America.
"They've really staked their reputations very significantly,” he continued, “on believing that the American system is in free fall and it's going to have a catastrophic end and that it's theirs to rebuild from the ashes."
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Mark Dudney, “How does this fall on you, as a historian?"
“Like a load of bricks,” Dudney quickly answered. “To me, what they're advocating is fundamentally un-American."
EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this web story inadvertently picked up a meme version of the photo with JD Vance.
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Do you have information that would help me with my investigation? Send me your tips: phil.williams@newschannel5.com
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