Editor’s Note: Several days ago I received the news of the passing away of Alex du Prel, a renaissance man and one of the only muckraking Journalists in French Polynesia. Born in Vienna, January 15, 1944, he was very European in temperament but American by nationality. Alex led a fabled life, arriving in Tahiti on a sailboat and later becoming a veritable local institution. I got to know him best when he worked as the manager of Tetiaroa, an island resort off Tahiti that was owned by Marlon Brando. However, Alex was much more than a resort manager. He was Brando’s right hand man in French Polynesia, sorting through a miasma of finance, politics and more than likely, family affairs for the iconic actor. Alex was also a journalist to be reckoned with. He founded Tahiti Pacifique, a monthly magazine that took on the shenanigans, incompetence, and corruption that were often synonymous with local politicians. Alex was a thoughtful, honorable guy with a conscience. He spent endless hours at his office, in reality a tumbled down shack, located in the midst of a lush rainforest on the island of Moorea. There was little money in his job and not a lot of recognition from locals. He was doing investigative journalism in French Polynesia because no one else could or would take on the powers that be. I’m told his magazine was just as, if not more, influential in Paris as in Papeete. If you wanted the inside story on what was happening in Tahiti, Tahiti Pacifique was really the only place to go.
This article is a translation of an obituary by Luc Ollivier, Editor in Chief at Tahiti Pacifique. We thank him for the honor of republishing it in Hawaii Reporter.
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“If I succeed it is because I have a nasty temper”.
This is essentially what Alex de Prel said during his last interview in August 2015 to Cédric Valax on Tahiti’s Radio1 news show. This is a personal analysis that no one has ever challenged. Alexandre du Prel, passed away on Tuesday, March 14, on his island of Moorea, leaving behind a saddened family, but also thousands of friends who were entranced by the notoriety of his magazine: Tahiti Pacific. There are many, who may shed a tear or at the very least regret his disappearance, which will leave a great vacuum in the local journalistic microcosm.
If Alex du Prel had a big, assertive mouth, it was mainly via his writing, done in his little wooden shack above Cook’s Bay in Moorea. From this perch he launched scud missiles every month since 1991 on the political and economic life of the “Great” island of Tahiti, which made him a man both feared and respected by the Tahiti establishment. His positions rarely left him an uncontroversial figure, but he was always able to defend himself.
One still remembers his editorial in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, which had earned him an avalanche of letters and emails.
Having arrived more than 40 years ago in French Polynesia on a sailboat that he had built, Alex du Prel came to seek an authentic way of life where simplicity and kindness were disappearing in favor of modernity.
Over the years, one man in particular would be the target of many of his attacks: Former President Gaston Flosse, who appeared in the front page of the first issue in May 1991. He would also go after figures the French administration or anything that could harm his idyllic image of French Polynesia: corrupt politicians, insufferable administrative rules, and especially all these “little chiefs”, the bureaucrats who came from Paris to advise Polynesians how they should live.
He called these people the “experts”.
“All my youth, I had dreamed of a place where we could live in harmony. This was Tahiti, where people spoke to each other and where the laws remained embryonic,” he told French investigative reporter Gérard Davet of Le Monde, in 2009.
Alex was a modern day adventurer and a practitioner of 17 trades. This earned him extraordinary encounters, like the one with Marlon Brando who entrusted him with the management of his Tetiaroa atoll resort in 1987.
However, Alex decided to live a new adventure.
The surveyor, the bronzed sailor, the actor, the yacht club director turned to journalism.
Alex has his own ideas about tackling big stories but his outspokenness didn’t lend itself to collaboration. His journalistic vehicle will be a monthly magazine and in this Alex could write as he saw fit. He borrowed $6000 from a few friends, whom he planned to repay as soon as he could (as he told me during our first interview).
His path was not easy and the process was chaotic at the beginning. He was very much alone before finding other volunteer protestors such as Bernard Poirine, Christian Beslu, Jean-Marc Regnault and many others. He was at one with his collaborators who felt as if they were prisoners of the “Flossien” regime—the government run by Gaston Flosse.
Alex had the gift of annoying Flosse (which would earn him several trials), thanks to increasingly detailed, investigative pieces and an ever-increasing number of sources who obviously wanted to remain anonymous, just like his “advertisers” who bought advertising space while telling him later not to publish the ads for fear of reprisals.
Alex would relate these kinds of anecdotes with a big smile but making a living from the publication was a challenge for his marriage. “Several times we have nothing to eat at home except a few bananas in the garden and a bowl of coffee”, he told us. Despite this, Alex believed in his mission.
Alex really wanted to be absorbed in the DNA of Tahiti Pacific. With an impertinent, even irreverent tone he created a bond with his readers. He did not hesitate to share intimate moments with them, such as the time he caught an STD when he was 18 years old. In one of his last interviews, he recalled, that it would be apparent to anyone visiting his office, re-reading his articles, or watching a documentary movie made about his life, that his magazine, Tahiti Pacifique was paramount.
Despite his weariness and illness, he remained stoic with the main goal of ensuring the future succession of the magazine. To be honest, as he would have liked to be, sometimes written or verbal exchanges between Alex and those of us taking over the publication, were charged.
But how could it have been otherwise?
The founder, father, of Tahiti Pacifique had trouble with change even though he said he was not psychologically rigid. But Alex also knew how to adapt and recognized when his work was done well. Since the end of 2016, he had stopped writing, his body betrayed him but the spirit was still alive and he managed to make himself understood when he observed our team carrying out research in his archives.
Until the end Alex kept an eye on his magazine. Tahiti Pacifique without Alex would not be like it was before–his acerbic style was really unique and could never be imitated. However, Tahiti Pacifique, as it has been doing since the beginning of the year, must continue to fight.
This is a fight that only we can do. Alex’s wish was that the paper continue to stand against power, money and corruption.
For these reasons, Tahiti Pacifique has become the leading Tahiti journal in Paris, where it is read at the Élysée, by the Prime Minister’s office (as L’Express wrote) and the French National Assembly. This recognition made Alex proud and continues to inspire us.
The editorial staff of Tahiti Pacifique and Hawaii Reporter wishes to express its condolences to Alex’ wife Célia Tepio Germain and their children, Poema Sophie and Philippe.
Photos courtesy of Luc Ollivier, Tahiti Pacifique
What We Have to Do to Fix Our Caustic Divide
BY FRANK SALVATO
The level of disdain, divide, and dare I say, hatred between the people in the United States today has gone well past ridiculous and entered into the realm of the obscene. Our people, who exist as having more in common than in difference, are being intellectually (and I use that term loosely) manipulated by radical malcontents to the point of civil war. It is exactly what anti-American Fabian Socialists (read: Progressives) want for our Republic.
That may sound like a “do as I say, not as I do,” statement but it is very far from it. Instead, it is a hypothesis based on a comprehensive understanding of the genesis of the modern day Progressive movement in the United States. And while many people lay claim to this comprehensive understanding, truth be told, those claims are most often hollow.
Sadly, we live in a time when people read the headline and – maybe – the first paragraph of an article and honestly believe they know what the subject of the article and its conclusions. The same can be said of books, documentaries and legislation. Just like those who want to sing along with the song without knowing the lyrics, their version of issues is often dramatically incorrect and inaccurate.
In our “my time is more important” culture, most can’t be bothered to fully consume information before they cultivate an opinion. Because of this, just as with precedent law, our understanding of today’s most pressing issues is skewed; our understanding of major issues is based on non-read articles, half-read books and watching trailers for documentaries, all while many claim to understand – fully – the content of those offerings.
Meanwhile, nefarious forces in the information sphere – on both sides of the aisle and in the total of the ratings game news media – are creating false-flag narratives and feeding them to the public knowing full-well that most who consume their propaganda (and yes I am using the word in the worst way possible) will advance it as fact (how many social media memes have you “shared” without checking their factual validity? I know I have fallen prey to this on a few occasions).
Mix into this reality close to two generations who, because of the systemic infusion of a falsely elevated sense of self-esteem, believe that everything thing they believe is fact and everything they say is truth, and we have the perfect prescription for a caustically divided people.
I urge each and every one of you to do a few things so that we can take the information sphere back from the disingenuous and the politically and ideologically opportunistic, and so we – apart from them – can begin to heal our nation. It is the only way that we can actually move forward as a people while averting our societal destruction.
First, we have to realize that we all have more in common with each other than we have in difference. Each of us wants to live in peace and prosperity; to succeed in our endeavors and to be safe while doing so. Each of us would like to safeguard our environment while utilizing the resources we are lucky to possess in order to pursue happiness. And each of us would like to leave the planet a better and more secure place for the generations to come.
The reality of these commonalities requires us to respect not only one another and one another’s rights, but to accept the responsibility that we must listen – and consume with fidelity to accuracy and truth – those opinions others may have that differ from our own. Each of us has a right to hold opinions, but expecting others to respect our opinions requires us to seat them in truth, not propaganda or politically or ideologically skewed false-flag narratives. Just because we would like for something to be true, doesn’t make it so. We have an obligation, as free people, to educate ourselves on the truth before forming opinions and that requires consuming information that may veer away from what we would like to believe.
Understanding all of this we would necessarily have to condemn, in the strongest terms, any act to silence informational speakers, i.e. speakers on college campuses, elected officials at town hall forums, or other knowledgeable public forum speakers who have taken to the podiums to share their views and knowledge on critical issues. We must be brave enough to consume their information and then committed enough to vet it – intellectually, not emotionally, for truth and accuracy.
Conversely, when a speaker, pundit or publication has been routinely proven to knowingly obscure accuracy and/or purposely advance false-narratives, we must shun them with prejudice and drive them from influence, even if it means culling an information source whose information we would like to believe. Truth mandates that intellectual sacrifice.
Additionally, we must fully understand the genesis and methods of those who would seek to destroy our society – and our Republic – for ideological and political reasons. Make no mistake, there are factions at work in the United States today, at the highest levels of the information sphere and the government, who do not have our country’s best interests as a priority; factions that have been slowly encroaching on our freedoms for over one-hundred years.
To understand these nefarious forces we must make the time – not take the time, but make the time – to read a few books:
Honorable mentions to this list include: American Progressivism: A Reader by R.J. Pestritto & William J. Atto; and The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns by Sasha Issenberg.
Lastly, and I am certainly not inferring that this is all that needs to be accomplished, we have to be extremely skeptical of the modern day information sphere. As former-President Barack Obama famously (or infamously) said, “Words matter.” That means that we have to take great caution and care when we listen to the usual suspect media and political talking heads. We have to consume and evaluate the words they use, not the words we want to hear or the meaning we think they are conveying.
A perfect example of this comes in the recent flap of President Trump’s use of the word “wiretap” when talking about the compromised privacy some in his campaign experienced during the 2016 General Elections. Because Mr. Trump used the word “wiretap” – which, in literal terms, means “to obtain (information, evidence, etc.) by tapping telephone or telegraph wires” – the disingenuous were able to refute the claims, causing an inaccurate news media frenzy, even though other methods of attaining information clandestinely were proved to have been employed, both legally and in a questionable form. The word “wiretap” facilitated the skewing of the truth and, therefore, contributed to the skewed basis for many opinions that have served to continue the caustic divide in our country.
We must return to the time when each of us held dear the responsibility to affect truth, honesty, and accuracy, and we must – must – demand the same of those who are honored with the public trust to inform and educate the American people. We do not exist in that state today.
To paraphrase a quote by Euripides, which is also attributed to Galilieo in another form, we, the American people must – must – “question everything; and accept nothing.” Once we start ferreting out the disinformation sources and disingenuous purveyors of propaganda, we will find that the overwhelming majority of Americans have a great deal more in common than in divide. Only then will we heal as a nation. Only then will we – We the People – begin to take on the task of returning government from the political factions to the American people.