Since his arrest in Greenland on July 21, Paul Watson has been the talk of the town. A major campaign has been launched to demand his release and prevent his extradition to Japan. Among the many voices defending his cause, others, sometimes even within certain environmental associations, find it appropriate to spread the worst accusations against him and refuse him any support. Some, for example, refused our invitation to the September 4 rally on the Place de la République in Paris on the grounds that Paul was a “eugenicist”, “misogynist” or “Malthusian”. A famous vegan cookbook recipe author saw fit to post a story on Instagram in which she laments that we’re “erasing the less-than-stellar facets” of a character “set up as an absolute hero”, thus sending a “disastrous message to minoritized people”. Such serious accusations, such unfair words in a context where Paul is risking so much, are a stab, not in his heart, but in mine. Far be it from me to paint an embellished picture. This is a matter of truth. Paul is an extraordinary man, but he’s still human. So he’s not perfect. He has flaws, and I know them well. I’ll deal with them at the end.
It is today with a double legitimacy, as a “minoritized person” as they say, but also as someone who knows Paul personally, that I am going to respond to this lecturing and out-of-touch author, but also to those environmentalist associations who have refused him their support (following the example of Amnesty International, which refuses to take the slightest stand against his extradition, despite the fact that they have made edifying reports on human rights violations in Japanese prisons – particularly against foreign activists). Amnesty France and International’s silence on the “Paul Watson case” is a betrayal of the very essence of their mission.
Up until now, we’ve always ignored the grotesque accusations made by anonymous individuals or groups such as “enragés” or “antifas” who don’t know Paul, and who spread rumours based on distorted words, taken out of context or completely invented. But repeated over and over again over time, by deliberately malicious detractors or useful idiots, they end up sticking… And while I know it doesn’t matter to Paul, for my part, having been personally confronted with racism, misogyny and having experienced poverty (in reference to Malthus), I feel the need to do him justice. I’m not doing it to convince those who denigrate him; these people are unimportant and don’t deserve the time I’d spend replying to them. I’m doing it for myself first, because I feel the need to. I’m also doing it for all those who support Paul and who are destabilized by these accusations to which they don’t know how to respond. Finally, I’m doing it for Paul, because he deserves it.
When I met Paul in 2005, I was 24. I had no maritime or associative experience, I had just gone back to school, I had just left the suburbs where I had spent my childhood and adolescence, with around 90% blacks and Arabs… For me, France boiled down to the concrete towers that blocked my physical and mental horizon, the facial checks on my friends, the dread of running into the ticket inspectors on the bus (an orange card was expensive), and the vital need to be respected as a chick (with no big brothers and no dad) in a world that showed no mercy for the weak. I grew up with the painful sensation of being neither completely from here, nor really from there either (there being Morocco). I knew, then even more than now, the face of hatred, the one that spits out that you’re not at home in this country and never will be, that they won’t rent you this apartment “because there are people they don’t rent to”. I’ve known a high school teacher who tells you that no matter what you do, no matter how good your grades are, you mustn’t fool yourself, because a normal employer will always prefer to hire a purely French person than an “Essemlali” …..
(I’ve also had inspiring teachers who told me they saw in me the ability to do absolutely anything I wanted in life, I haven’t forgotten them). When I started out as President of Sea Shepherd France, I had to deal with these white males in their fifties, company directors without a drop of activism in their veins, who tell you without knowing you that you’re obviously a “casting error”.
I grew up in a council estate, raised by a single mother who cleaned houses to make ends meet. I grew up with this contempt for women, foreigners and the “underprivileged”. It also forged my character, boosted my resistance to challenges and fueled my aversion to injustice. It’s a flame that serves me well today, so I have no regrets. I went to the school of life and I also learned to laugh at adversity with those other kids raised the hard way… I learned to assert myself and I consider that a blessing. And if I love Paul so much, beyond the public persona that everyone knows, it’s because he was the first person who trusted me fully, without ever making me feel that I had to prove more than the others, that I had to compensate for my gender, my origin or my youth…. Paul was a breath of fresh air that helped me to venture far from the towers of my city, across all the world’s oceans and as far as Antarctica, to meet the whales… He was a beacon in the night and I’ll be eternally grateful to him for that.
In the rest of this text, I respond to some of the main nonsense that has been circulating for years about Paul Watson.
1/ Paul would be “racist
– Brigitte Bardot
Paul’s accusations of racism are based on his loyalty to Brigitte Bardot. Paul has always been grateful to her for helping him save tens of thousands of seal pups by joining him on the Canadian ice floe in 1977… While he doesn’t share her political views, he has esteem and gratitude for everything she has done for animals over the decades. This simple fact sometimes earns him the label of “fascist” from a thought police who claim to be “antifa” but who carry within them the very failings they denounce.
Some people are so lacking in nuance that they turn things upside down. In a story recently published by our famous vegan chef, I read that not “pointing out Paul’s ethical flaws” because he doesn’t castigate BB is tantamount to creating a “hierarchy of emergencies”, a kind of reverse speciesism.
According to her, this leads to the following reasoning: “Not denying BB as a whole means telling Arabs (and homos, apparently) that animals are more important than they are.
For me, it’s precisely the opposite, the hierarchy of urgencies would be precisely to condemn Paul, not because he shares Bardot’s political opinions (at the very least, I could understand), but simply because he refuses to reduce her to that.
I plead guilty in this case, because I’m also infinitely grateful to her for her titanic fight on behalf of animals. Beyond her questionable stance on certain issues and her political allegiances, which are – quite logically – not my own, I would add on a purely personal note that, having met her on several occasions, the gentleness in her eyes when she speaks to me, the way she hugs me and kisses me as if I were her granddaughter, are a million miles from what I would expect from a “fascho”. Arab as I am, I don’t feel the need to vilify Bardot to demonstrate my visceral aversion to all forms of racism. This battle – the fear of the other – is much deeper than that. And I find it indecent, not to say insulting, that “antifas” who – for the most part – have never experienced racism can dismiss out of hand what the people concerned think. I’d also like to point out that I don’t know any blacks or Arabs who identify with the “antifa” movement. Not for nothing.
Brigitte Bardot with Paul Watson in 1977 during the campaign against the Canadian seal hunt.
– Mexican immigration to the USA
Some of Paul’s detractors attribute to him an anti-immigration stance, particularly concerning Mexicans in the USA, based on racist considerations. Once again, this is taking things out of context. Paul is in fact criticizing one of the worst forms of social dumping fomented by the American agro-industry, which, thanks to a constant flow of illegal Mexican immigrants, keeps the latter in inhumane working conditions akin to modern slavery, with little or no pay, recurrent sexual assaults and death…. The “Operation Blooming Onion” report published in 2021 describes this decades-long problem. (read https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/25/us-farms-made-200m-human-smuggling-labor-trafficking-operation )
Paul’s point is that to be happy, immigration must be chosen. When it is motivated by despair and the need to escape misery, it gives rise – with a few exceptions – to the exploitation of human distress and a painful feeling of uprooting. I know something about this, as it was the case for my parents.
To avoid the tragedy of immigration, we need to tackle the inequalities between rich and poor countries. And it’s these inequalities that I’ve always heard Paul denounce, notably through certain European fishing agreements with African countries, for example, which he describes as outright pillage and neo-colonialism. This plundering of Africa’s fish-filled waters to satisfy European stomachs is plunging millions of young Africans into misery… these are the same people we find clinging to Europe’s borders and at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea… Paul’s point about immigration is right there.
– Paul’s fight alongside the First Nations: Hoka Hey!
Paul has always been very close to native cultures, particularly North American Indians. He sees himself in their struggle and in their culture, which has a biocentric tendency (as opposed to the anthropocentrism prevalent in Western societies). His link with them goes far beyond his involvement with the Lakotas during the siege of Wounded Knee in 1973. Their teaching has stayed with him all his life: “Hoka Hey = it’s a good day to die”, the Lakota battle cry, has been his leitmotiv in a fierce battle that requires a willingness to risk one’s life. The Lakotas gave him an Indian name, the English equivalent of which is “Grey Wolf Clearwater”, and the Mohawks presented him with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, in recognition of his fight. Paul wrote: “Our ships are the only ones in the world to fly the flag of the Iroquois Confederacy, and we are extremely proud of it. This flag represents the blessing and protection of an incredible nation, which has understood the intimate link that binds us to this marvellous planet, which we must defend and protect at all costs.”
For as long as I’ve known Paul, I’ve heard him speak of the Natives as his brothers in the fight for the Earth. He remained close to them throughout his life, teaching the history of their oppression at the Sorbonne in the 70s. He has always denounced the fact that the U.S. National Education System does not teach the massacre of millions of American Indians by Europeans, and the fact that to this day there is no monument commemorating the genocide of the Indians in the United States. Paul has also supported the Kayapo Indians in Brazil as they opposed the construction of the Xingu River dam, and has led missions alongside Australia’s aborigines.
In 2014, Sea Shepherd’s annual meeting, bringing together the movement’s international antennae, was held on Mohawk territory in Vermont. The Mohawks came all the way to Woodstock to welcome Paul, even though they were busy elsewhere with summer solstice ceremonies. He was very touched.
Paul’s best friend Walrus (David Garrick) (we named the Sea Shepherd France boat in his memory), with whom Paul shared the seminal experience of the siege of Wounded Knee in 1973, dedicated the rest of his life to defending aboriginal land claims against Canadian forestry and mining companies. He enabled the First Nations of British Columbia to keep their land by discovering centuries-old culturally modified trees (CMTs), thus establishing proof of their ancestral presence on the land in question, despite the absence of written title deeds. Paul is extremely proud of himself.
Finally, the original version of the Sea Shepherd pirate flag, invented by Paul in 1991, features a feather that represents aboriginal culture. It’s this version of the logo that I’ve decided to bring out again for Sea Shepherd France.
So much for the “racist” Paul.
2/ Paul would be a “eugenicist
Strangely enough, eugenics is one of the vile accusations levelled at Paul Watson. I still had to find the exact definition of the word, and I found this in the Larousse: “A theory that seeks to select human communities on the basis of the laws of genetics in order to improve the race.
No matter how hard I look, the only thing I can find that could have been interpreted and distorted in his words to make such nonsense is the fact of having children.
Paul considers that one of the major problems of this planet – and of our species – is all those people who have children without really wanting them, without loving them, without feeling responsible for them. All those children who grow up without love, without attention, without care…
He considers that the most ultimate responsibility of a human being is to give life and take responsibility for it, and he questions the fact that to exercise any profession, drive a car or teach, we have to undergo training, be tested on our abilities, but to be a parent, there’s nothing. Psychopaths and sexual abusers can have children and thus create their own victims. He finds it absurd, for example, that the anti-abortion movement in the USA is also in favor of the death penalty. Judicial errors aside, the people who end up on death row have often had a chaotic existence, a childhood without bearings, without love… Today, some American states prohibit abortion even in cases of rape or incest. In addition to the state’s stranglehold on women’s bodies, this is also the manufacture of tomorrow’s human misery… Paul therefore raised the idea of a parenting course that would consist of demonstrating that we are capable of being responsible, of loving, educating and providing for the essential needs of a child.
While this may be understandable in theory, in practice it’s obviously a slippery slope, because who would be in charge of such training? Who would define the criteria and award the certificates? And then, of course, any means of coercion for those who fail to meet these criteria would be tantamount to embarking on a dangerous slope that Paul has never ventured down, as he is well aware of the risks of drift. In any case, even if it doesn’t lead to concrete measures, this reflection stems from a concern to protect children from the abuse and mistreatment of which millions of them are victims, and has absolutely nothing to do with eugenics, which – according to one of its definitions – consists in “manipulating genetics and social practices with the aim of determining the most favorable conditions for the procreation of healthy subjects, and by the same token, improving the human race”. So it has nothing to do with that. Besides, Paul doesn’t want us to improve unborn children, he wants us to listen to them more. He has written extensively on the fact that adults have much more to learn from children than vice versa (see his magnificent text “A child is born with seven natural gifts”).
So much for Paul the eugenicist.
3/ Paul would be a “Malthusian”.
Malthus was a 19th-century priest who believed that the human population was growing faster than resources, and that the poor were responsible for the problem because they were having too many children. According to Malthus, the solution was to stop giving aid to the poorest.
The demographic explosion is an issue on which Paul has spoken many times, but never in connection with poverty. “This planet cannot contain 8 billion human beings who eat animals”. Apart from the ethical considerations of slaughtering billions of animals, the ecological disaster caused by over-consumption of animal products is without doubt one of the worst threats to sustaining life on this planet today. Paul therefore warned that if we don’t take care to exceed planetary limits, both in terms of numbers but also and above all in terms of lifestyles (and in this respect rich countries have a far more crushing impact than poor countries), “Nature” will call us to order in the most painful of ways. Rich countries that aspire to become even richer, and poor countries that aspire to be like them… This is the crazy race we’re on, and we absolutely must change its trajectory. Here again, we’re a long way from the fundamentally flawed binary thinking of Malthus.
I have a vivid memory on the subject of “overpopulation”. At a conference in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat in 2008, Paul talked about the fact that, in his view, the world is going so badly and humanity is so oblivious to its destructive folly, that it’s not so much a question of not having any more children. He explained that, in his opinion, it’s precisely those people who are so aware of the state of the world that they don’t want to have children – who should. For they will pass on to their children the essential values the planet so desperately needs.
At the end of the conference, a young woman came to me in tears, asking me to thank Paul whose words had helped her to see things differently. She was a young mother and felt guilty about having given birth to a child, precisely because our species is destroying this planet. I couldn’t help but think of the tragic consequences of a mother’s guilt in her relationship with her baby… what might the life of this child have been like, raised by a mother who thought she shouldn’t have brought him into the world? I’ll never forget her tears and her gratitude to Paul who, through his simple and accurate words, had unknowingly helped her to free herself from a regret that had no reason to exist.
So much for the “Malthusian” Paul.
4/ Paul is a “guru
This is probably the first criticism I’ve read of Paul, described by his Western detractors as a “guru” in the pejorative sense of the term. Originally, the term “guru” means “spiritual guide” in Hindu religions, and has nothing negative about it. In the West, however, the term has become deviated from its original meaning, following numerous cases of fraud and abuse by pseudo-spiritual masters, who have taken advantage of vulnerable people. These impostors, often at the head of sectarian movements, are usually convicted of sex trafficking, extortion and criminal conspiracy, among other offences.
Apart from the fact that Paul has nothing to do with all this, it’s interesting to note that for Indians, the fact that the term “guru” has become so corrupted in the West is considered an insult and a form of neo-colonialism that scorns and devalues non-Western concepts.
The antithesis of the guru (in the pejorative Western sense of the term)
In fact, it’s all the more preposterous to call Paul a “guru”, given that he’s the very opposite of what you’d expect. Where gurus lock people into preconceived ideas, manipulate them and tend to deprive them of their “free will” and isolate them from the rest of the world, Paul always encouraged people to think for themselves, to follow their hearts, to listen to their inner voice. Even to those who asked him “how can we help?” Paul always replied that everyone has the answer to this question in their heart: “What do you like to do? What makes you tick? What are you good at? And how can you put this to good use for a cause that transcends all of us”?
In his text on the 7 gifts of childhood, he writes: “A child’s dreams can come true if he doesn’t lose the seven natural gifts he receives at birth. The secret is simple. Follow your heart, and remember that your heart is never wrong.”
I think the guru image also comes from the fact that he’s extremely charismatic. It’s not the result of hard work or calculation. Paul is charismatic because he is inhabited by a cause that transcends him. As a result, he naturally takes up space. And within the movement, this has given rise to jealousy. When I read the testimonies of certain activists and former colleagues who criticize him for putting himself forward too much or for having too much ego, all I perceive is their own ego in search of light. Paul is not egoless, but his ego is a servant, not a master. That makes all the difference. For the ego of this movement’s militants is most certainly its worst gangrene. Where Paul, for example, took no steps to effectively protect the Sea Shepherd name and logos – by refusing to appropriate them – those who stole them from him did precisely the opposite… I remember Alex Cornelissen, director of Sea Shepherd Global, telling me just after he had ousted Paul: “Today, Sea Shepherd is no longer Paul, it’s us”.
So much for the “guru” Paul.
5/ Paul would be “misogynistic
I’ve also read that Paul was a misogynist, not least because he surrounded himself with pretty women, whom he reduced to their looks. He was criticized for his last wife’s “luscious blonde” looks, and for his friendship with Pamela Anderson.
Here again, in my opinion, misogyny is more a question of discrediting Paméla Anderson’s legitimacy as a credible activist and campaigner for the animal cause, because of her looks. The fact is, Paméla Anderson has been committed to the animal cause for 30 years, she is audible and she uses her fame for this fight which is close to her heart. The problem lies rather in the fact that we live in a glittering society that glorifies the superficial and neglects the essential. That people like Pamela Anserson, who are immersed in both worlds, serve to bridge the gap between the essential and the superficial, is rather clever. For example, in 2013, there was talk of Paul being invited to appear on France 2’s “On n’est pas couchés” (watch here). Production finally told us that Paul spoke English, so he wouldn’t be invited. As luck would have it, Paméla Anderson was in France at the time. The show absolutely wanted to invite her. Pamela made it a condition of her appearance that Paul would be present with her to talk about the cause of the oceans. Suddenly, the language barrier was no longer an issue. Ironically, on the set, Léa Salamé asked Paul if he didn’t find it “sad to need Pamela Anderson to be a guest on TV…”. I nearly choked.
Crédits : Bestimage
The fact is that Paul has always had enormous respect for women, and more than that, he has never differentiated between the sexes. He often entrusted the reins of the organization to women, from the bottom of the ladder to the highest levels of responsibility. He has also always been particularly attentive to misogynistic behavior on the part of certain sailors, whom he considers to have no place in the Sea Shepherd teams.
So much for “misogynistic” Paul.
With the 4 directors of Sea Shepherd Global, Peter Hammarstedt, Geert Vons, Jeff Hansen and Alex Cornelissen, 3 years before they illegally ousted Paul Watson (and Lamya Essemlali) from the Board of Directors.
6/ Paul’s flaws
Having come back to what he isn’t, I’ll conclude with what he is. Without pretending to describe the entirety of his personality.
Paul is a genius when it comes to strategy, naval battles, conveying his thoughts with passion, inspiring people… He is also humanly benevolent, attentive and extremely loyal in friendship. He has a heart of gold and is, without exaggeration, one of the kindest people I know.
But he never knew how to run an organization, and never wanted to. He has never known how to protect himself or his organization from the voracious appetites of opportunists. He hates internal conflicts and has always preferred to ignore them (or even run away from them) rather than face them. He never saw the ill-intentioned profiteers and manipulators coming, and through blind, naive trust he let them take over too much space, to the point of letting them monopolize what he didn’t want to or wasn’t able to protect. That’s exactly what happened with part of the Sea Shepherd movement, which betrayed him because he didn’t set up any safeguards. He was betrayed many times and repeated the same mistakes over and over again.
The implosion that took place within the Sea Shepherd movement in 2022 is the result of years of blind trust, placed in individuals who schemed behind his back, sometimes with very big strings (as I learned afterwards)….. The consequences are far-reaching, as they have led, in spite of himself, to a hijacking of the movement, to injustices and to a weakening of a precious tool for the cause. It’s difficult for those around him, and some of the worst trials I’ve had to endure within the movement stem from this. I’ve warned him many times, but Paul is an idealist, and that makes him vulnerable. And that got us into so much trouble… it almost killed the movement. But I don’t judge him. I love him for who he is, and maybe it couldn’t have been any other way. His faults are the flip side of his qualities. I sometimes feel like shaking him and shouting at him that it’s time to learn from his mistakes, that he has a huge responsibility because he inspires so many people to trust him and that he needs to be careful, to protect this movement from the inner evil that can eat away at any growing movement, from the temptation of power from those who don’t have his sincerity…
But I can’t hold it against him. Because it’s also because he is who he is that this movement exists, and that thousands of us are part of it. He has created something unique – which I hope will outlive him – and he has changed the lives of many people, starting with my own. This is true of Captain Watson, the mentor. But it’s also true of Paul, the man. It’s said that a friend is someone who really knows you and loves you anyway. So it’s as Paul’s friend that I sign this text.
Lamya Essemlali
