A white supremacist wants to buy part of Coos Bay's Port
The sale was for January. It's now up in the air and under scrutiny.
Quick note: Over the past few months, I pitched a story around to a few publications about how anti-fascist researchers infiltrated the Oregon ‘White Lives Matter’ telegram group chat and exposing its members. One man was getting hundreds-of-thousands of tax dollars in Coos Bay, records showed.
The news, and expose, of the neo-nazis rippled through town. But, month after month, no coverage. Public officials in Coos County knew since September, my reporting showed.
No bites on my pitch. So, I’ve decided to do my own reporting and publish something here.
Feel free to forward around to others who might be interested in this— I’m thinking I’ll continue to do more original reporting here if there is enough interest.
If you want to stay in the loop on this, and other things I’m working on… 👇
The news:
In September 2024, researchers working with Corvallis Antifa infiltrated a private, anonymous Neo-Nazi group chat on the messaging app Telegram. The group chat was where Oregon’s chapter of the hate-group White Lives Matter organized. The white supremacist effort emerged as a racist response to the Black Lives Matter movement, and has become visible nationwide through demonstrations and linked to alleged terror attacks.
Individuals associated with White Lives Matter have been arrested for racially-motivated attacks. One man was arrested for throwing smoke bombs and spraying bear-mace at attendees of an anti-racist concert in New Jersey, and another was sentenced to 18 years for firebombing a church in Ohio.
Inside the Oregon private chat, White Lives Matter (WLM) chapter members discussed a long term strategy for growing their influence in the state.
Among them was Michael “Whit” Gantenbein, who lives in Coos Bay. Gantenbein holds an important position in the coastal community: he owns a boat and hydraulics repair business called “Whit Industries” that operates with few to no competitors. Inside the group, members buzzed about his plans to support their efforts in the southwestern Oregon coast community.
“Whit is kinda wanting to start up his own community out in Coos Bay,” Cruz Walters, the WLM Oregon’s chapter leader, said in leaked audio. “He wants us to maybe one day eventually move down there. He has jobs for people to do, he has many career opportunities. He wants us to get established and create a community out there.” Cruz noted that the group had their eyes on local government positions, too.
Gantenbein and the others hold extreme racist views. “Can only hope day of the rope comes fast,” he said in one post, referencing the Turner Diaries — the book that inspired the Oklahoma City Bombing and the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021, among numerous other acts of violence since its publication in 1978. In white supremacist circles, this is a moment when white supremacists will hang all race traitors, including journalists and politicians who don't comply with their white purity demands.
When he’s not in private WLM chats, Gantenbein makes his money off public and private repairs, according to watchdog group Information for Public Use, and has received over $320,000 in taxpayer dollars via contracts with four different government agencies in Oregon. Much of his business is done with public contracts for hydraulics repair. He’s also been hired to do some work under the State and Federal funded Coos Bay Rail Line project.
According to an open letter headed by Western States Center, which tracks extremists in the region, and confirmed in reporting by Counterbound, Whit Industries has plans to purchase another boat repair and manufacturing shop called Giddings Boatworks. The business is located in the publicly owned Charleston Marina, part of the Port of Coos Bay, an international shipping center.
If the purchase is successful, it would put him in charge of a key piece of the Port’s infrastructure. In addition to Whit Industries, the acquisition would add more weight to Gantenbein’s position in the local economy. Giddings Boatworks maintains the Port’s fishing fleet out of the Charleston Marina. It’s one of the only fabrication shops in town.
Gantenbein’s growing influence occurs at a critical time for the Port of Coos Bay, which is in the midst of a $2.3 billion expansion that could transform the local economy. And Gantenbein is set to benefit from the infusion of public dollars.
Over the past three months, a network of organizations gathered to oppose the sale and call attention to the Port of Coos Bay using taxpayer money to support a Neo-Nazi-led business. Local social justice nonprofits, an electrical union, regional environmental groups, and a statewide nonprofit working with Oregon’s refugees and immigrant communities have all signed an open letter to the governor-appointed Port of Coos Bay Commissioners.
“Given [Gantenbein’s] documented actions, we are concerned that approval of this lease may cause devastating and irreversible negative impacts on the Port operations, the Coos Bay community, and Oregon as a whole,” the letter stated.
Gantenbein does not separate business from his White Lives Matter activities. In September 2024, he drove his Ford work truck to help display a banner that read “Make White Babies” and “Stop White Genocide” from a I-405 overpass in Portland. According to the leak, he allegedly has directed his employees to print out stickers with propaganda on them to be distributed across the state.
“The white nationalist movement has a long history of trying different strategies to build economic, geographic power bases in specific communities,” said Kate Bitz of the Western States Center. “This is something that groups try over and over again. It gives them the opportunity to enact their vision for our whole country in one community.”
Despite the depth, and sheer amount of evidence connecting Gantenbein to the Neo-Nazi group, reporting by Counterbound found that local officials are fearful that by severing economic ties with Gantenbein, they could be sued. That’s led them to try and settle the issue in private, out of the public eye.
In November 2024, over two months after Gantenbein was first identified as a White Lives Matter organizer and his public contracts published, the Port Commission shared a statement with Counterbound, indicating they were working to find a solution. “There are no imminent plans for lease transfers involving the Shipyard. We are reviewing our policies for leasing property to ensure they comply with Title VI and will share any policy revisions publicly. We are committed to making this a transparent process. Any future lease transfers would fall under the new policy being developed.”
Reporting made clear that the central concern driving the ongoing inaction and lack of public comment was fear of Gantenbein filing a First Amendment free speech lawsuit, which could cost the Port a lot of money. At the Port’s November 21st meeting, officials passed a Civil Rights Act Title VI non-discrimination policy requiring vendors to follow all “anti-discrimination laws.”
“Countering organized hate-groups is a new way of thinking for many of these public institutions,” says Bitz, noting the limitations of anti-discrimination Title IV rules. “There’s many examples of how nondiscrimination policies fail when the person you are dealing with is part of a larger group. They don’t apply to a Neo-Nazi organizer because they are not built for that.”
To make matters worse, the deteriorating statewide news environment has not helped. Regional and local newspapers and magazines have either declined, or been slow to report on Gantenbein’s affiliations.
Despite the lack of public attention, powerful government officials have been watching. Over the past five years, the Federal and State government have worked to transform Coos Bay’s deep water port into a multi-billion dollar international shipping center. Multi-million dollar grants are flowing and the stakes are high.
“We know that this is a difficult issue involving competing interests, the need to maintain port operations, and a longstanding gap in workforce development,” the open letter to the Port Board of Commissioners read. “Approving this lease would not solve these problems; it would instead create another, larger problem for our community, state and nations.”
While local and regional media outlets have lacked coverage about Gantenbein’s involvement in the Port of Coos Bay’s expansion, local right-wing media has not shied away. Rob Taylor, a radio personality who helped plan the December 2020 breach of the state capitol by far-right protesters, has seized on the anti-discrimination policies at public hearings. Taylor was shown to be communicating with Republican Representative Mike Nearman on how to open the capitol door to the mob.
Taylor, yelling like a radio jockey, and banging his fist on the table at a Coos County hearing, spoke in tacit support of Gantenbein. “When people want to deny people to have businesses with you because they have some radical beliefs,” he said, “We don’t want to see businesses targeted like that, as long as they are following the law.”
“I can tell you right now, we’ve got a new president and D-E-E-E-I is dead,” Taylor said to a few claps of applause. “We’re not going to have it any more, I’m tired of being told that I’m a racist, that I’m oppressive because I have certain beliefs. We have a right to those beliefs. We have a birthright to those beliefs.”
When North Bend, Oregon — a city across from Coos Bay which has also paid Gantenbein for repair work — passed its own anti-discrimination policy in response to the leak, Taylor called it a left wing plot.
For his part, Gantenbein emailed an apology to Port Commissioners, identifying himself as a proud community member and “a Trump supporting patriot.”
“Images in a social media post have emerged that seem very incriminating when viewed out of context,” Gantenbein wrote. “We now live in a world where unethical people will egregiously post Miss information to garner personal fame as is the case here.”
He did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Counterbound.
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Very well written, Theo!