Zero Personal Integrity: the New Politics of Allegations.

I already stated in our first response
video that I don't know or care about mr. Potter's personal life I don't care about his professional life shark and I do care about people who ripoff well-meaning donors and deprived the animals of money raised supposedly for their benefit we have exposed willpotter for his Kickstarter campaign because he took in more than $75,000 on a promise to document abuses at factory farms for me this video is not about any specific political issue for me this video is about a broad question of ethics honor dignity one of the meaning of life and leading a good life in the next five minutes you're gonna see the particular example or the particular case study that I'm really using as the window frame or the window dressing to take glimpse into this issue but I'm not particularly interested in delving into the details of this one case study I want to talk about those underlying themes today I really did get upset talking to Klaus from plant-based news and the very last message I sent to Klaus you know you know written series of messages going back and forth said to him you know clothes what happened to me can happen to you you also could get accused of being a scam artist you also could get falsely framed of being a fraud you could face accusations and allegations that discredit you in your personal life your professional life that suddenly make it impossible for you to do fundraising for the things that mattered to you most in his case he is a YouTube channel called plant-based news he has a website plant-based news you could be cut off from all of that and worse someone could make allegations talking about your sex life someone could make allegations claiming that you're a sexual predator and it wouldn't be hard to do it wouldn't be hard to do either in terms of something that's a complete lie or even just putting together or selected fragments of fact out of context and presenting them in the most unflattering way what happened to me clothes can happen to you now I'm saying this too close because the reality is clothes is one of the people who did this to me clothes ran a news service as mentioned and it really does hurt me and impact me much more that I had to face this kind of defamation misrepresentation unfair treatment from someone like clothes it hurts me more coming from him and coming from his seemingly respectable news agency when they allegedly do research and fact-checking and they claimed in his words was he he claimed that there was a lot of evidence that I was running a scam when nothing in my life was a scam everything was an open book it was completely obvious it was going on he could have very easily he didn't check any facts he was recycling internet rumors as fact without even putting any thought into it it's very damning and damaging to have a source like him making that kind of judgement and presenting it in the way that he did and it hurts me personally much much more than you know a teenager with a YouTube account who just takes a kind of fleeting interest in this and jumps on a bandwagon of rumor and innuendo of course both are bad but there's a difference and of course one of the differences between a real newspaper or real magazine and just a teenager you know mouthing off on the internet whether it's on Facebook or YouTube or what have you it's it's supposed to be newspapers do research they do fact-checking they have editorial standards and ultimately they have accountability that when they're wrong the issue or attraction they shoe an apology maybe they delete the original video or original news article ever it is and they they put up some kind of correction or some kind of further article that explains what the situation actually was as opposed to how they they misrepresent it before and most G Washington channel already no nothing like that ever happened with clothes and from my perspective it was just this morning in this time zone it was just this morning that I was talking with us with Klaus and I said and look how all of this can happen to you and even I if I wanted to I could do this to you I know enough about clothes and his personal life I could put together this kind of defamation against him you know I'm not gonna do that because I have personal integrity and I go through this life again and again being disappointed that the people around me including authority figures what university professors I'm happy that the people around me seem to have absolutely zero personal integrity and I'm of course I was having this conversation this morning with close because I was so disappointed him driving zero zero personal integrity I'm disappointed with the vast majority of people I met through the vegan movement the animal rights movement and even more broadly ecological political wounds I'm I'm very disappointed that the vast majority of people this is brought into my life had zero personal integrity and I've seen that again and again and I'll be blunt with you I want out I mean the cumulative effect of this it's extremely demoralizing I didn't get involved with this movement to be a one-man movement I didn't want to try to save the world alone from the from day one on this channel I was always talking about the necessity of getting organized into little groups of at least five people so you can take on city hall do the paperwork form a foundation start lobbying government start getting involved with going to the school boards and complaining about you know dairy industry propaganda being given to children children being taught that milk is healthy or whatever that whatever they shoes doesn't even have to be mean it whatever the issue is nobody can take on this kind of lobbying this kind of pressing for for social political change nobody can do it alone or at least nobody wants to even if it's just five people you need to you need to get organized and yeah it's really incredibly demoralizing for me that after so many years and reaching out to so many people positively that I don't have that group of five people I can't rely on and instead what I've encountered are thousands of people like Klaus thousands so I ended this message to close by saying this can happen to you you can have your you can be put in the position of having to clear your name against allegations of fraud and scam and scandal and sexual impropriety that are totally unreasonable and totally unfounded or in your case maybe they're gonna be a mix of little bits and pieces of fact taken out of context and presented and unflattering and so whatever it is there may be a mix of fact in fiction or it may be complete fiction in my case I think everything was just complete fiction I was dealing with but whatever the public seems to take very little interest in in distinguishing those things and that's why journalism really matters that's why people in position little positions of with a little bit of authority like Klaus why it really matters that they use that use that correctly I ended it by saying to him close all of this can happen to you but one thing will remain different you will not be in the position that I was in of having to face the possibility that you lose the legal right to see your own daughter you will not be in the position of contesting a divorce and a custody hearing in terms of your relationship with your own infant daughter now five years old that adds a dimension of sorrow and seriousness to this that you can't imagine close that's one of the things that really raises the stakes here so with all that haven't been said I now go on to this controversy involving Steve Hindi for about five minutes of film here and Steve Hindi is very quick to throw words like scam and scam artists around and fraud and what have you and you'll see lat a few more words at the end of this video I am not so quick I'm not so relaxed about making those kinds of allegations and that for me ultimately is a question of dignity honour personal integrity previously on shark today there are groups and individuals who haul in donations based on what they're going to do but then there's no follow-through willpotter claims to be an award-winning investigative journalist in June 2014 willpotter announced he was going to raise money for a drone project through a campaign on kickstarter.com willpotter stated he would use the drones to watch over factory farms Potter called the campaign drone on the farm on march 2 kiyomi Shimizu pointed is very frustrating when project starters disappear this is actually one of the projects that have completely put me off using Kickstarter all together on March 5 2015 Potter posted about an upcoming kickstarter party that would include vegan pizza snacks and beers on 10 willpotter posted that the kickstarter party had been a success and included pictures that was the final Kickstarter update as time went on the complaints continued the updates did not and now on this week's episode hi my name's Will Potter I'm an investigative journalist and a faculty member at the University of Michigan what I'm about to say has been a very long time coming so for instance I was the first investigative journalist to be selected as a TED fellow and while it was a TED I met the founder of Kickstarter who was also a TED fellow and I told him I was thinking of starting a project with drones to investigate factory farms and he said it sounded like an awesome idea so a few months later I submitted the project and it took off like wildfire it was funded in hours massive media coverage places like The Washington Post wanted to follow along throughout this whole experience this whole project in research and not long after that though I truly hit rock bottom the insomnia and chronic depression PTSD the suicidal ideations they're kind of all tangled together like this big ball like of old Christmas lights is how it always felt in anyway like that the breaking point for me was when I was having a conversation with a mentor of mine through Ted and that's when I finally crashed like how bad all of this had to come and he asked me to do this role-playing exercise with them to think through some of this stuff and he said ok he would be willpotter and he said all the comments that I've said about my health or about why I didn't have time to address it or whatever and then it just broke me and one of the questions this fake willpotter asked me was what's going to happen if I don't change course and my immediate response was you're not going to be here in a year and the speed at which that came out of my mouth was just this punch in the stomach and I mean that's when I clicked that I knew it was true I know it in my bones I desperately needed a change and thankfully I found one that applied for the prestigious tonight Wallace fellowship in journalism at the University of Michigan it brings top journalists from the New York Times and BBC and outlets around the world for this year of kind of study and retreat in a way and just when I was starting to feel like I had my feet planted under me again is when the harassment started Steve Hindi is kind of like the Alex Jones of the animal rights movement everything is one big conspiracy and only he sees the world correctly only he is out there crusading for justice anyone who doesn't agree with him is the enemy this day the only actual evidence showing that Potter even put any effort into the project for which he took tens of thousands of dollars appeared on the 2016 docu-series truth and power the small amount of footage aired revealed nothing more than him flying a toy around shark made a few offers in 2014 to help will Potter get his project off the ground shark has been flying drones since 2010 when we know how valuable they can be to help animals but mr. Potter never even responded to our offers anyone serious about developing a drone operation will take an offer of assistance because there are significant challenges to such an operation mr. Potter silence in response to our efforts left us with little faith in his dedication and now we know his promise wasn't authentic to begin with mr. Potter's current bio on Ted's website makes no mention of his drone project nor does mr. Potter mentioned in his bio on his own website willpotter is obviously abandoned his drone project and he hasn't returned the money from his donors nor has he given them an explanation of where the money went why would Ted stand behind someone who has behaved in such a blatantly unscrupulous and unethical manner check out his Facebook post for March 1st depicting him wallowing in a hospital bed while showcasing as many expensive tattoos quote how I spent my spring break my latest surgery went well but recovery will be long there's never a good time to be derailed like this but it feels like getting kicked when I'm already down end quote and quote trolling by far-right neo-nazis and other groups has escalated dramatically through it all I had been working harder at a higher level than I ever have unquote I'm sorry but I can't tell what work mr. Potter is supposedly doing well whatever it is it certainly doesn't include making proper use of the $75,000 plus that he took from good-hearted people so he could fly drones over factory farms I already stated in our first response video that I don't know or care about mr. Potter's personal life I don't care about his professional life shark and I do care about people who ripoff well-meaning donors and deprive the animals of money raised supposedly for their benefit we have spose willpotter for his Kickstarter campaign because he took in more than $75,000 on a promise to document abuses at factory farms and more than four years later he has at best a handful of wide-angle still photos to show for it you could practically get that for free on google maps in our first response video I posted my email address so anyone could hold me accountable whether they're from TED Talks which put up a statement of support for mr. Potter's false claims or anyone else now we have an interesting phrase in the English language that's show business a five-year delay in filmmaking because the director or producer for the project has a mental breakdown is hospitalized for a series of mysterious emotional or physical maladies does that mean the project is a scam does that mean it's a fraud a lot of people would say no I think a lot of people with experience in filmmaking would be able to give you a long list of examples of successful projects that had five years delays in production research preparation whatever the case may be sometimes for reasons that are very clear-cut and easy to communicate to the investors and sometimes for reasons that remain shadowy and obscure that's show business I would not in this context call willpotter a scam artist or a fraud and I have been recently and for a period of about two years in the position of having to clear my name defend myself against unreasonable charges that I was allegedly involved in some kind of scam or fraud when I was in an incredibly simple and transparent situation where I collected donations all the donations came in and in a belt one day about 24 hours to donations were given to the law firm the law firm press charges case proceeded and there was paperwork for everything and when you put your money into the legal system what you get back is paperwork so it was the most straightforward thing imaginable to debunk those complaints and on a one-by-one case-to-case basis I reached out to people whether they were journalists or other youtubers are just kind of fear mongers the internet said oh well you know have you seen the paperwork have you thought about it are you wanting to talk to me and tried to set those misconceptions to rest it's very difficult to say that I won what ended up happening was just that I was convinced of the idiocy and total lack of personal integrity of my whole generation of aspiring activists so you know in a lot of ways it feels like a defeat even if you've won because what you're seeing across the board I mean I was talking to another vegan recently a long time vegan activist and he kept saying to me that we're all on the same team like oh well even though there may be differences of patience and I had to say back to him I said well look you know if you have two teammates people playing soccer on the same team or something and one of them accuses the other of being a pedophile one of them threatens to stab the other one of them claims that he has evidence sufficient to convict the other and states that he's trying to round up a gain of strong people to beat up this other person and carry them to the police station and press charges and present this evidence wow you you really think we're all still on the same team at what point do we admit there's more than one team here or there's a there's a breakdown in this presumed you know unity you're imagining and you know I mean that's a kind of extreme and ridiculous example although a real one it's not hypothetical it's a real situation we we all can learn from but in many cases the ideological and abstract divisions between people run deeper our more invidious our more difficult to overcome so we're not on the same team and allegations of fraud allegations of being a scam artist they do run very deep I do not find what willpotter has said in his defense convincing I don't find him well-spoken I don't find him articulate the sad thing is in this world there are a lot of inarticulate people who are in a sense of what they're being accused of he obviously has a somewhat nervous and fidgety and evasive manner in the video he made speaking on this issue and he's obviously resorted to trying to vilify Steve Hindi trying to you know lash back at his accusers rather than just clearing his own name rather than just coming out and basically apologizing for a five-year delay in the shooting schedule and saying sorry to be clear that was shooting in reference to filmmaking I should have said in reference the filmmaking schedule the word shooting has more than one more than one meaning thank so much that there's been a delay in the filming schedule and he could have said in pretty much the same words as I said earlier in this video that he's sorry but that's show business I don't think willpotter understands that the public supporting his project whether they be donors or investors or you know colleagues in the filmmaking world they really don't care about his relationship with his wife his relationship with his children his psychological problems his therapist his surgeon your personal life ultimately can't be used to leverage your political life in that way it can't this isn't primary school you can't bring in a note and get an extension from the teacher but what you can do is just man up apologize and try to reassure your audience that even though there have been five more years in the schedule than they might have been expecting that this is going to be the best phone project ever I noticed that he wrote a very in articulate update just a few days ago I think it the date was just given by the month so quite recently he put an update on his Kickstarter talking about some of his academic publications and the research he's been doing and how he hopes this will actually make the Kickstarter project better than ever in terms of this film he's planning to make and the reality is he may have the last laugh because he's an experienced filmmaker he's an experienced journalist and probably with or without this budget he could have made this project a success and now conversely if it's not a success if it's terrible filmmaking we can already see here a lot of reasons for why it might turn out to be a very bad project indeed he has managed a lien aid and make enemies out of exactly the people he should have been interviewing and even celebrating in this same documentary it's veteran activists like Steve Hindi people who've used drones in the past people have been exposing factory farm conditions veteran activists for example at Mercy for Animals it's another vegan non-profit foundation those are the people he should have been putting on camera not just appealing to for help but he should have been telling their life stories he should have been talking to them about their families and I don't know their trips to the doctor are there there are times with the psychiatrist whatever it may be those are the stories he should have been putting on camera he should have been getting sympathy and support and cooperation from actually all of the people he's now ended up really turning into a kind of embittered opposition against this project this case study illustrates two big themes number one we are not all on the same team it's fractious and fragmentary and at the best of times that fragmentary nature means that we have meaningful criticism mutual scrutiny and exchange of views but the second big theme here is total lack of personal integrity and obviously this whole story this in this case the accusations and counter-accusations and you guys can take the time and see the details of exactly what willpotter has said and trying to blacken the character of Steve Hindi and then Steve Hindi goes to the police and deals with the details in the police reports it's nasty it's pretty dark it does not reflect well on willpotter at all it really is ultimately all about personal integrity and for me sadly this is just one more fable showing how scarce personal integrity is out there and what a massive disincentive this is for people taking on ambitions that in any way rely on human cooperation if I had taken the same energy I put into vegan activism over the last four years and put it into painting I could have developed my skills as a painter and I say that not with any reckless self confidence as to my talent or the public having demand for my paintings but primarily because painting is indeed something it's a set of skills that I can refine in isolation without really depending on other human beings as it happens most of my passions in life really require high levels of trust and mutual cooperation politics is one and another one is language sitting completely alone your ability to make progress in a language like Cree or a jib way or lotion or Cambodian he's incredibly limited language like politics really needs a critical mass of even five people but small groups of people language work is not the kind of work you want to be stuck doing alone and as I say it's really with great sadness that I now have to look back at what has happened in the last four years or five years and I have to admit that I'm so let down by my colleagues and contemporaries that I would have been better off taking those efforts taking that energy taking that time and funneling it into an area of study an area of research or even an area of creative self-expression in which I could be completely self-reliant because I'm very much very very deeply disappointed with an entire generation of people who have a lot more in common with Klaus than they did with me people who seem to have zero appreciation for the importance of in two words personal integrity about us yen