Wild Wild Country, an Emmy-winning Netflix documentary series, has rightly garnered widespread praise since its release earlier this year. It is refreshingly non-didactic, with a warmth toward its interview subjects that avoids judgement of their actions. It takes what could easily lapse into an exploitative fixation on the bizarre (Cults! Poisoned buffets! Free love!) and steers viewers towards a meditation on some fairly heady concepts. Wild Wild Country’s subject is historically distinct — a clash between a new religious movement and local residents in early 1980s Oregon — but it contains historical resonances that stretch from the colonization of the Americas to present-day battles over gentrification, voting rights, and economic justice.

The series chronicles the rise and fall of a new religious movement led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later “Osho”) and administered by his charismatic, acid-tongued secretary, Ma Anand Sheela. Formed in India in the 1970s, the movement rapidly grows in membership and wealth — attracting the attention of the Indian authorities. Sheela orchestrates a move to the United States and the organization purchases a sixty-four-thousand-acre ranch in rural Wasco County, Oregon, where it attempts to build a city: Rajneeshpuram.

This effort quickly thrusts movement adherents (called sannyasins or “Rajneeshees”) into a pitched conflict with the aging conservative residents of the closest town, Antelope. When the residents attempt to stop the incorporation of Rajneeshpuram, the organization doubles down — purchasing property in Antelope, running sannyasins for elected positions, and essentially taking over the city. They then bus in thousands of homeless people to their ranch to influence the county elections.