Counter-Currents
Michael Edgar Bivins allegedly photographed in the act of being as hateful as the Right-wingers he wrote about as an antifa-friendly journalist only a few years ago.
1,329 words
Everyone has a favorite hate crime hoax, right? Mine is the hilarious saga of Azalea Cooley, a cancer-stricken wheelchair-bound black lesbian from Portland. Talk about ticking off the oppression boxes! Once you combine the cancer and the wheelchair and the black and the lesbian, that’s what’s known as an Intersectional Quadfecta. Back in the early 1990s, Cooley notified police that someone had spray-painted mean things, such as a swastika and BURN NIGGER BURN, on her house. It escalated to where someone was burning crosses in this poor cancer-addled, non-ambulatory Sapphic Negress’ backyard.
But after detectives planted surveillance cameras in a nearby apartment, video revealed Cooley on the back porch, standing up from her wheelchair and lighting a wooden cross she’d stuck into a flower pot. It turns out that she didn’t have cancer or need the wheelchair, either.
I honestly thought hate crime hoaxes would never get any better than that.
I may have been wrong, though.
Leave it to an antifa-sympathetic Portland “street journalist” to come up with what — if my hunch proves correct — might possibly be the most ingenious hate crime hoax of all time.
It differs from the Azalea Cooley saga in several significant ways. First off, the alleged perp, Michael Edgar Bivins, is a white male. To my knowledge, despite his years of obsessive anti-racist activism and tireless Nazi-hunting, he has never claimed to be a member of an oppressed racial, sexual, or religious minority. He never claimed to be Jewish, as are so many people who commit anti-Semitic hate crimes. So by allegedly vandalizing and defacing a pair of synagogues and attempting to burn down a mosque that had people inside it, he clearly wasn’t attempting to gain sympathy as a victimized member of a purportedly oppressed minority.
Bivins is a longtime Portland resident who earned national attention a few years ago by filming the city’s chronic and operatically retarded political street violence from an antifa-sympathetic perspective. From 2017-2019, he also wrote an estimated 20 or so articles for the free local rag Willamette Week about things such as a Proud Boys vs. Antifa street fight and a scare story about a “a rise in racist and anti-Semitic hate incidents across the Portland area” that so impressed long-time Oregon Senator Ron Wyden that he mentioned the piece when endorsing some new anti-“hate” legislation.
You can buy Jim Goad’s The Redneck Manifesto here.
I first became aware of Bivins’s existence in 2017 after Willamette Week published a cover story hit piece on me that more or less blamed me for creating the Proud Boys and bringing fresh new waves of political violence to Portland’s streets. The article noted that in 1997, right as my book The Redneck Manifesto was released, I made an in-store appearance at a local Portland independent bookstore called Reading Frenzy. The store was owned by Chloe Eudaly, who by the time the hit piece was written had gone on to become a member of the Portland City Council. Since this was Portland, Eudaly was immediately pelted with tomatoes by bloodthirsty purity-spiraling Leftists asking her why she’d even think of platforming such a racist terrorist. Amid the hubbub, rumors emerged that Eudaly had put money on my books while I was in jail.
That’s where Mike Bivins came in. He wanted to know if I was still in touch with Chloe. He wanted to know if she’d contributed to my jail canteen fund nearly 20 years prior. I told him I’d gladly discuss the entire matter if he came onto my podcast and faced me like a man, which he naturally refused to do. Snipe-and-run is the standard MO of the self-described “journalist.”
Mike, if you’re reading this — and I’m sure you will –, I would gladly donate money to your jail canteen fund. All I need are the details, brother.
What adds a completely different dimension to this situation is that at least over the past half-year or so, Bivins’ social media presence indicated that he’d taken a hard-right turn politically. He’d been complaining about Mexican immigrants, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and the media’s tendency to bury stories about non-white murderers and black violence against Asians. He referred to Bill Gates as “an Epstein-associated pedophile” and Elon Musk as “basically Jesus.” He is now posturing as anti-abortion and anti-masking.
The first question that springs to mind is, “Why did he change his political opinions so drastically?” The second question: “Did he actually change his opinions, or is this part of the plot?”
Commenters who claimed to have followed Bivins online or knew him personally say that he may have switched teams anywhere from two to four years ago.
Other tweets from Bivins indicate he’d just gotten out of what he called an “abusive marriage” and was spending some nights on the cold streets.
According to a police statement and charging documents, on April 30 Bivins broke a window at the Congregation Shir Tikvah in northeast Portland. On May 2, he allegedly spray-painted DIE JUDEN on Congregation Beth Israel. On May 3, he reportedly twice attempted to set the Muslim Community Center of Portland — whose attendees are said to be predominantly black — ablaze while a worship service was underway. The act was captured on video.
The next day — Wednesday, May 4 –, Bivins allegedly returned to Beth Israel and tossed a rock through a window.
The same day, apparently annoyed with the Portland Police Department’s inability to capture him, he went to a local TV station. According to an unnamed source at KPTV, he reportedly confessed to the crimes. Bivins showed the employee a hammer and icepick he claimed he used to smash windows. “I’m not going to stop,” the anonymous worker quoted him as saying: “He made a point to say, ‘When people find out it’s me committing these things, they’re going to be shocked.’” Bivins allegedly promised to return two days later after the station had done their due diligence about the case and had contacted the religious institutions.
When he returned on Friday, police arrested him. I imagine him saying, “What took you so long?”
He was arraigned on Monday and charged with ten crimes, including felony arson and five misdemeanor charges of bias crime. His jolly demeanor in the courtroom was as discomfiting as David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz’s odd smile when being dragged before paparazzi. After being ordered to stay at least 150 feet away from the mosque and two synagogues, Bivins was bailed out on a measly $45,000 bond (meaning he had to pony up $4,500) and is due back in court next Tuesday. Allegedly he’s staying with his mom for the time being.
So . . . why did he do this? And why did he make sure he got caught?
The least complicated answer is that he’s just a garden-variety political fanatic who changes his views like most people change their underwear. He sincerely became a “Right-winger” — at least the cartoonish caricature of a “Right-winger” he’d been agitating against all those years — and decided he could garner some clout in his new scene by attacking some Muzzies and Jews.
The most intriguing answer, though, is that this is merely what he wanted everyone to believe. Perhaps he hasn’t changed a single view, and this was an incredibly elaborate attempt to fool people into thinking that he’d been “radicalized” by Right-wing memes — which, as every good Portlander knows, immediately leads one to throw rocks at synagogues and burn mosques to the ground. Maybe his “hard-right turn” was merely an extended Andy Kaufman-style performance piece intended to place his piddling acts of religious terrorism within a long-established Portland tradition that insists if you dare even think a non-Leftist thought, this is what inevitably happens.
If my suspicions prove correct, kudos to you, Mike Bivins, for putting a new twist on the tiresome sameness of hate crime hoaxes. And seriously — if you need me to put some money on your books, let me know, friend.
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26 comments
Wasn’t Azalea Cooley just made White House Press Secretary?
That was great! You made my morning.
Thank you, friend. This Karine something-French-sounding is horrible. Which is perfect, I guess.
Like Azalea she checks off all the boxes.
I was just reading an article about Reverend Jim Jones being a great hate hoaxer. He staged many a phantom White Supremacist hate crime and poison pen letter. Of course his mostly negro flock fell hook Lin and sinker.
“The first black blah blah. The first LGBTQXYZ blah blah…”
So much for that “people are people” crap.
Doesn’t ‘die juden’ just mean ‘the Jews’ in German? He should have just written ‘die jews’ or ‘(German for die) juden’, ie. Don’t mix the languages.
‘Sapphic negress’ introduced my coffee to my nostrils.
Perhaps he was just trying to be helpful by labeling the building for the benefit of passers-by. Some Portlanders might have otherwise been confused as to what exactly they would find inside.
Reminds me of The Simpson’s episode when Sideshow Bob gets released from jail.
Lawyer to Bob-“And isn’t it true that you have s tattoo on your chest that says ‘Die Bart, Die?’
Bob-“Oh no, that’s simply German for ‘The Bart, The.”
So the guy clearly wanted to get caught. Way to spend time indoors off the street, if he was homeless? Or just finally admitting his true character? The Jewish self-hate hoaxes are more confusing, though. Looking to create some of the antisemitism they always claim is on the resurgence? Looking for individual attention? Projecting self-loathing outwards? Becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy? That one gets me, I must admit.
I believe it was Steve Sailer who quipped that “the demand for racism far exceeds the supply.”
So excellent.
Personally, I would have called this “Hey, Journo — Whatcha Doin’”?
That said… Hell’s bells that Azalea Cooley story is a doozy.
The young hate crime hoaxers of today like Jussie Smollett just don’t appreciate the old-school pioneers like Tawana Brawley and Azalea Cooley who managed to become national figures before there was an internet or social media to help promote their tall tales.
Mr. Smollett, you’re standing on the shoulders of giants….
So do right-wing views lead to violence, or is this just a leftist libel? Well, from the forums that I had read, e.g. the DailyStormer-forum when it existed, and the TRS-forum (equally no longer existing from what I see), this notion is absolutely confirmed. But the relevant point is not so much that many posters very much advocated all kinds of violence against their perceived adversaries (particularly: sadistic violence, against weak, vulnerable people… as disgusting, as non-Aryan as it gets) but that the forum moderations never objected to it, so it does represent the generally accepted and common attitude of “right”.
It therefore comes as no surprise to me that it is for “left” easily possibly to drum up these broad coalitions against “right”.
I have given up on “right” to be effective against White Genocide because with its attitude towards violence, “right” will usually be despised by the majority of Whites. Our case is extremely simple: do you prefer to live in a White society, or do you prefer to live in a vibrant society. We could win tomorrow. But edginess is just more important than the survival of the White Race, isn´t it.
“So do right-wing views lead to violence, or is this just a leftist libel? ”
“Views” do not lead to violence. Even open calls to violence don’t lead to violence. People make a conscious choice to be violent. Thanks for asking.
https://www.takimag.com/article/between_thought_and_action_in_norway/
Um, antifa? BLM? The black race in general? Will Smith? Do you have a computer? TV? Live in America? Seen any pro-abortion protesters? Ever heard of David Crosby?
Jim: those forum postings exist. So you´re saying they´re meaningless? Sorry, that is just pointless (cf. Mohammedanism, nothing has to do with nothing, suras have nothing to do with mohammedan behavior).
Shift: the difference is: this left-wing violence is considered… maybe: is successfully marketed… as defensive. Maybe the media arm of the cabal can sell anything to the people, i.e. could also sell rightist violence as legitimate.
But to my point: are Whites against right-wing violence? IMO, it is the quintessential American (i.e. White American) attitude: to live and let live. To mind one´s own business. That is incidentally the libertarian core concept. I do therefore not believe that Whites are positive towards violence against vulnerable people, and therefore the cited rightist attitude from forums is damaging to the White cause.
Needless to say that that is totally different with legitimate self-defense violence, e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse.
Maybe a disconnect between what people say in online forums ANONYMOUSLY blowing off steam alone in their underwear and what they really think? I’ve facetiously called for euthanasia for certain members of The View on here and had it removed which it should have been. The first thing I learned when I got a computer which was less than 20 years ago: beware the comments! You can read the comments here and not want to kill yourself.
“Jim: those forum postings exist. So you´re saying they´re meaningless?”
If they exist, then show them to me.
To repeat (read more slowly this time): Views do not lead to violence. Making a choice to be violent is what leads to violence. There’s no such thing as involuntary violence. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court overruled an Ohio law that made it illegal to advocate “crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform,” as well as assembling “with any society, group, or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism.”
Saying that speech inevitably results in violence has been a leftist excuse to censor for generations now.
Otherwise, to allude to—you didn’t even link to one—a few anonymous postings on TRS and DS forums, then to make a million-mile leap and say they “represent the generally accepted and common attitude of ‘right'” is about as statistically inept as one can get—especially when you didn’t even TRY to link one anonymous comment to one real-life act of violence.
All you’ve provided are baseless allegations that seem dubious to me. The Daily Stormer clearly states on its home page that “Anyone suggesting or promoting violence in the comments section will be immediately banned, permanently.”
But even if these these alleged posts did exist, the fact that they are anonymous leaves open the possibility that anyone from any political persuasion could have posted them for any number of reasons. I suppose the whole “hate-crime hoax” angle of this story managed to slip past you. So…yeah…it’s a really really really bad argument you’re making there, fella.
Clearer now?
Jim:
-“Views“: I didn´t refer to views but to explicit demand of violence
-“speech inevitably results in violence” cf. “views”. I didn´t refer to speech, to the expression of viewpoints but to the explicit demand of violence.
-“you didn’t even quote one” The forums are closed.
Do you doubt that such postings exist, or existed? You need my quotes?
-“a million-mile leap and say they “represent the generally accepted and common attitude of ‘right’”” “Generally accepted” as evidenced by the fact that the MODERATORS didn´t object
-“The Daily Stormer clearly states on its home page that “Anyone suggesting or promoting violence in the comments section will be immediately banned, permanently.””
Anglin himself multiple times expressed his desire that homosexuals be thrown off roof tops with their hands tied behind their backs; posting pictures of such occurrances in Iran: disgusting, revolting sadistic violence, celebrated by “right”.
“one real-life act of violence” Do you doubt that there is, or at least was in the past decades, acts of rightist violence? It doesn´t matter if the actors are linked to forum postings; what matters is that rightists advocate violence, and that deters normal White people.
“anonymous leaves open the possibility that anyone from any political persuasion could have posted them for any number of reasons” Why don´t the moderators delete such postings? Do the moderators agree with such postings? Is it in line with the forum views of a rightist forum, thus represeting general rightist views?
Again, to say that the Daily Stormer embodies what is the commonly accepted notion of the political “right” is only your perception, not the general public’s perception. There are no stats that support that, and as successful as the DS is in its niche, I doubt that most Americans have even heard of it. When the public thinks of “the right,” they probably think of Donald Trump and Tucker arlson.
That point seemed to evade you the first time I made it, as did the idea that one makes a DECISION to be violent that can’t be blamed on words, as did the citation about Brandenburg v. Ohio, so I’m not sure if there’s any use stating these points again.
You’re exchanging comments with someone whose words were mangled by Francisco Martin Duran, who shot at the White House in 1994. I never said anything such as “Shoot at the White House” or “kill politicians,” yet I got subpoenaed to appear in his trial.
Apparently I’m exchanging comments with someone who can’t distinguish between speech and action. It happens. But you’re punching way above your weight when it comes to this topic.
How many serial killers have mangled Bible passages as justification to strangle hookers? Should we get some “moderators” to excise passages about the Whore of Babylon?
Maybe take a few deep breaths and ponder these points. Also read Greg’s article about the mass shooting in Buffalo yesterday. I’ll have my own article up on the incident later today.
I first became aware of Bivins’ existence in 2017 after Willamette Week published a cover story hit piece on me that more or less blamed me for creating the Proud Boys and bringing fresh new waves of political violence to Portland’s streets.
I read that linked essay. How was it a “hit” piece? I mean, what, if anything, was inaccurate?
You’ve led an interesting life, Mr. Goad. Have you written anywhere about your prison experiences? That could be very interesting to many people.
I did a nearly three-hour podcast picking apart everything in the article that was inaccurate. A provably false thing was the allegation that the woman’s “face was fractured”—something the hospital report disproves. The hospital report clearly states there was “no internal trauma” to the skull and says nothing about fractures. But a libel lawyer told me that even though it’s untrue, it’d be pointless to sue unless I can directly prove that the article’s inaccuracies caused me to lose income.
The entire article consisted of lying by omission. I have the recorded conversations with the reporter, who was so inept, he didn’t know how to record phone conversations, so I recorded it for him. He conveniently slalomed around several things I told him in our conversation, such as the fact that I had a restraining order against the woman in question and that she’d left endless death threats against me—transcripts here—none of which seemed to matter to the Portland DA…nor the people who make a point of retelling this story a quarter-century later…nor [cough] the people who seem to assume that a leftist newspaper isn’t going to lie by omission.
There’s also the goofy insinuation that I somehow was the one who brought political street violence to Portland. Leftist street violence existed in Portland long before I even got there. There was a proto-antifa gang of “anti-racist skinheads” who were basically given carte blanche by City Hall to attack anyone they labeled as a “Nazi,” no questions asked. I write about them—including their three physical attacks on me—here. But in the article, they are only referred to as “Portland anti-racist activists.”
Then there’s the quote from a single book review on an obscure website saying that my Redneck Manifesto should be “the Proud Boys Bible.” Why? The first time I saw that review, I was puzzled. My book was about the history of poor whites in America and how they became convenient scapegoats. The Proud Boys are a fraternal, multiracial drinking organization that sometimes engaged in self-defensive violence during political rallies. I haven’t had a drink in over 40 years, and the last fraternal organization I belonged to was the Boy Scouts. There’s almost no connection besides the fact that I know Gavin McInnes. But that’s the only connection they needed to concoct a lie and run with it.
“Have you written anywhere about your prison experiences?”
The answer to your question is right there in the article:
“The other thing that Goad decided while incarcerated? That his own suffering in jail far outweighed that of his victim. In his memoir Shit Magnet, Goad writes that he had no sympathy at all for Ryan: After all, he’d been assaulted, too.”
Thanks for the reply. Sorry you’ve been harassed in this way. It’s too bad we no longer live in the old Christian America, which was a far better place ethically and civilizationally, even for nonbelievers. I’ll have to read your article about the antiracist skinheads (only the white race produces violent race traitors targeting their own people, a fact that should be very disturbing – intellectually, as well as emotionally – to all white preservationists).
What I meant wrt a recounting of your prison experiences was something more in-depth. Those like me who have never been on the ‘inside’ usually have only movies or hearsay to use to form impressions about these hellholes. I did have two acquaintances who spent time up in San Quentin (a nightclub owner back in the 70s for drug dealing for his patrons; a financial embezzler, who also made some kind of severe, actionable threats toward his accusers, in the 00s). But the first guy was ‘connected’, and had no personal problems doing his ‘time’ (he was getting somewhat demented when I got to know him, so it was hard to get many useful or interesting insights from him about his prison experiences). The second guy, despite being a white collar criminal, was a large and extremely strong lifelong weightlifter in his late 30s-40s (I once spotted him doing “close-gripped” barbell chest presses [ie emphasizing the triceps] with 315lbs – 3 45lb plates each side + 45lb bar, I recall this well), plus he was much smarter than the average ‘con’, so he ended up obtaining some cushy and safe prison job (something to do with reading). I doubt he had problems doing his time, either. The second guy also didn’t like being reminded of or discussing his time inside, especially around lots of people, which was usually the case when I’d run into him.
Shit Magnet covers just about every moment of my 2.5 years behind bars. I’ve never shied away from any questions about it. I’ve never shied away from anything. This is why I have so much contempt for anons who always for some weird reason try to lecture me about how I don’t know how much can be risked merely by speaking one’s mind while using one’s name.
My experience was that people get along better in prison than they do anywhere else. This essay isn’t from Shit Magnet, but it’s an article explaining why I think prisons are relatively peaceful, especially compared to the hype you see in movies. It’s because the agony of incarceration doesn’t come from other inmates—it comes from a passively sadistic society that seems to think caging people and treating them like animals is “justice” rather than revenge. It’s a classic example of “two wrongs make a right” thinking. https://jimgoad.net/nicest.html
Never trust anyone, be they a convert or a true believer, who acts the way a leftist thinks someone on the right would act.
Never let the system pigeonhole you. Just because the system brands you a dissident, because you respectfully (or disrespectfully) disagree with what it says you should believe, doesn’t mean you have to start acting like their textbook example of a dissident. The most dangerous dissident to the system isn’t the kook who isolates himself from society only to go mad and hurt himself or someone else. The most dangerous dissident to the system is one who doesn’t act like a dissident, who participates in society, shows up to the party uninvited, and talks openly about what he believes.
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