About as European as dog stew
This was my column in The Malta Independent on Thursday, 30 August.
Scrabbling around for something good to say about Mintoff is unseemly. It is far better to say nothing at all, if you can’t handle the facts or speak the truth.
Those in a position where they cannot avoid saying anything should weigh their words well before speaking them. Those who can avoid speaking altogether should do just that if they are incapable of rising to the occasion.
And rising to the occasion does not mean saying good things about a bad man. It means having the strength of character to face facts and deal with them.
The tragedy of Maltese society is that it aspires to be European but can never really be so, no more than Sicily can, because it is mired in southern Mediterranean values which are literally the antithesis of the beliefs and thinking which underpin northern European democracy and liberal thought, the gold standard of ‘Europeanness’.
It is these very values – I could be cynical and say that it is actually the lack of them – which lead so many Maltese people to think, even those who should know better, that rising to the occasion on the death of an appalling person like Dom Mintoff means ‘being nice’, rewriting history, or distorting the truth and calling it “maturity” or being “civilised”.
It is actually the polar opposite of being mature and civilised. The truly civilised approach is to say things as they really are, though in the case of senior politicians, couched in the proper language and without the expletives which come immediately to mind.
Rising to the occasion means having the integrity, the intelligence and the eloquence to describe the man as he really was, and to do the same with the destruction he wrought, instead of finding ways of believing that it never happened, that it was somehow necessary, or that it really wasn’t that bad after all because, look, we lived to tell the tale (some did not).
The fact that Mintoff had and still has many thousands of supporters who might be upset by strong words used about him is neither here nor there. We do not need to respect their ill-informed opinion, and we would be wrong and cowardly to give in to fear of what they might do.
Quite frankly, let them do their worst. They’re the ones with the serious problem.
Those prominent and not-so-prominent speakers (and writers) who seek to avoid upsetting them have made a rational, though immoral, choice. They prefer to upset the legions of Mintoff’s victims, who are not crazy, disruptive and violent, and who will therefore neither call them bott l*ba nor threaten them with grievous bodily harm, than upset the armies of his fans who are just that.
They also seem to think that speaking well of Mintoff makes them come across as the better person. It does not. It makes them seem spineless, silly and even stupid (lack of rational thought and an inability to assess the facts). Strangely though, it appears to make them feel better about themselves.
Yet they can rest assured that many out here are extremely annoyed at the way no politician, journalist or newspaper is prepared to tackle the truth as it is, the facts as they were and still are. Death changes nothing of what occurred.
Those of us who have not succumbed to the manufactured mass hysteria are angry when they read about how lovely, kind and generous Mintoff was, and how devoted to his wife and to the paupers of Malta while modelling himself on Jesus Christ.
We cannot believe our eyes when we see that even otherwise sensible people have written that Mintoff should be judged as a parliamentarian and not for his behaviour outside parliament – and this when it was bis very behaviour outside parliament which turned Malta into the hell-hole it was.
Perhaps it is now fashionable to render oneself ridiculous, as long as one’s equally ridiculous peers agree.
Mintoff’s admirers flock to the internet to litter comments-boards with vulgarity, violent threats and insults as a way of showing how angry they are. But those who found Mintoff highly objectionable in life, and who are deeply offended by the hagiographies and eulogies, do not do the same to show how angry they are, how saddened by the rubbish being said and written.
They do not do what Joe Grima did when a British priest wrote what he felt about Mintoff, for the Catholic Herald, and become violent and aggressive on Facebook.
The prime minister was quoted in the press as saying that Mintoff’s death was handled with “maturity”. Sadly, it so spectacularly was not. The show put on by the Labour Party was excruciating and embarrassing – but just what you would expect.
The state funeral was a charade, but obligatory in this place where favours must be returned. And the speeches by politicians were absolutely dreadful, falling far short of the required mark. They did not rise to the occasion, not at all.
Though Mintoff had been dying for the past year and more, and at 96 his death could be expected anyway, nobody seems to have worked at a speech. It was all off the cuff and terribly ill-considered or perhaps not even considered at all.
Maturity obliges one to face the truth and the facts and to deal with them – in as dignified a way as possible because politicians are not journalists and so are subject to greater constraints.
Maturity is not the avoidance of unpleasant truths because they are inconvenient and might upset the more violent elements in society, or because we are reluctant to ‘look bad’. In seeking to avoid looking bad, our politicians have ended up looking worse.
The so-called maturity of reconciliation, 25 years ago, did not help Malta at all. It simply allowed a canker to grow unchecked, and worse than that, it permitted that disgusting swathe of society, who think that violence and suppression of free speech are entirely normal ways to deal with criticism, to carry on believing they are right.
In the last few weeks, they have been encouraged further in thinking they are right.
The result is what we see today: 18-year-olds talking about hanging and assaulting anyone who criticises Mintoff in public, and their fathers and mothers writing (if you can call it that) openly on the internet about beating, shooting and tearing apart writers and interlocutors who speak the truth about their false god because it is not their truth.
The result is that we are back at square one, with people, even journalists, too afraid to tackle the subject of Mintoff in anything other than cooing tones. Or perhaps the problem never really went away.
It is all about control through fear, and we thought we were done with all that.
This is their way of silencing people who say the things that they don’t want to hear. They are now EU citizens, no thanks to their personal choices, but they still cannot grasp the basic concepts which Europe takes for granted: free speech and open debate.
How are these people any different from the Muslim fundamentalists who shock European society when they say they will blow up a newspaper office because of a Mohammed cartoon, or murder a writer for saying something they don’t like? They’re not, but they just don’t get it.
They don’t get it because no political or social leader in Malta is prepared to tackle them head on and to tell them that society is not prepared to tolerate this level of violent speech designed at silencing people, to remind them that we are in Europe now and not in Mintoff’s Malta or in Gaddafi’s Libya, or Mao Tse Tung’s China.
Our leaders should lead, and one crucial aspect of leadership is having the guts to stand up for what is right, against what is so very wrong. But first, those leaders have to believe all this themselves, and my fear is that most of them don’t. They are the representatives of their people, and think as they do.
When some Maltese politicians were interviewed about the Islamic fundamentalist reaction to the publication of a Mohammed cartoon in a Danish newspaper, some years ago, I shook my head in disbelief at their responses. The most common reaction was not criticism of this assault on the fundamental European value of free speech, but “Why did they publish that cartoon? I wouldn’t have done it, knowing all the trouble it would cause. They should apologise and sort it out.”
That is so typical. And so very dangerous.
The assessment of who is in the wrong is completely perverse: the journalists for publishing the cartoon and ‘causing trouble through provocation’, and not the savages threatening to blow the journalists up and violating one of the principles which real Europe holds most dear.
It is the very same reasoning which underpins the widespread reluctance of Maltese politicians and journalists to speak the facts about Dom Mintoff. And when one British priest gamely tried to do so in the London newspaper The Catholic Herald, and the urban underclass of Malta got wind of it, look what happened.
It’s called self-censorship through a reluctance to cause trouble, and it is very wrong.
Both the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition fail Malta miserably in their reluctance to stand up to these disgraceful people whose values are still those of a North African dictatorship, and who are about as European as dog stew.
Why does a small minority in Malta feel so very different to the rest? The reason is simple. It is not just a feeling, but a fact. They are different. They were raised in, or adopted along the way, the cultural and social values of the European gold standard, in conflict with and contrast to the real Malta, which is violently and determinedly Sicilian, proud of it, and unable to function out of context.
The reason more Maltese people do not leave Malta for some years at least, despite being of a generation where they should do so because it is essential for their growth and development, is the deep-seated fear that when removed from their familiar context, they will somehow disappear. This is what they mean when they say that Malta is comfortable: that they feel comforted.
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I am waiting for you to write a comparison of the Islamic fundamentalist obsession with their leaders/Mohammed and the Mintoffjani and their beloved Mintoff. The same mentality unfortunately.
I cannot agree with you more on the subject of maturity and this column is excellent. I cannot agree with you more. I would applaud this column if I could.
You have spelt out the feelings of so many of us: we would not dare speak lest we upset our neighbour-thug. I would not dare, in the first three days after Mintoff’s death. Then, I passed a comment on FB and somebody challenged me to say whether I had personally lived through those times. Then the floodgates were opened and I simply could not stop.
I also added my comment to Fr. Lucie-Smith’s comment board beneath the now-famous article on Mintoff. I could not agree more with what he said and finally somebody had the guts to speak out the truth (apart from you of course).
Fact is, yes, I was afraid in the beginning. But then I said: what the hell? I don’t want to live under Mintoff’s legacy of fear and oppression any longer. I want to be free.
I don’t want to make Mintoff a success by being afraid of his thugs. I don’t care.
And I just wrote and wrote in a manner as to show rationality and pain. I was shocked, in some circumstances, to see that some staunch Mintoffjani did not attack what I wrote but they looked at it as someone would examine a presumably-dead rat in one’s own garden: they looked at what I had written, they poked at it with a stick to see whether it was “alive” and then they treated it almost with disdain. There was disdain. “you deserved it” kind of treatment. Or “min qallek tkun nazzjonalist”? Or worse still “but he was a great leader still because he gave us money and wealth”.
Fact is, the politics of reconciliation failed because where there is no facing of real facts, there can be no closure. Without closure there can be no reconciliation. When Joseph Muscat said that the 80’s were Golden Years, I felt disgust. When I see the 80’s stars aligned in some of Joseph’s press conferences, I feel nauseous. I do not manage to, even physically, handle the image.
I just found myself remarking to an acquaintance a week ago that I found August most upsetting because I had to live through the Mintoff-parade/charade. The week starting 20th August was surreal. In fact, I boycotted Mintoff’s funeral by simply spending the day at the beach just not to hear and see but still, I knew that Malta’s dictator, the man who ruined the lives of so many, starting with those of my parents, was being given a hero’s funeral. However, a real hero would have had real crowds, not the thin line of people I saw on an iPad of a friend last week (whilst I gloated). Mintoff didn’t have the crowds Borg Olivier had had or, more recently, which Guido De Marco had had.
Well, I guess it is not and can never be a matter of bygones be bygones because we’re having to face Mintoff’s legacy of ignorance, hatred and violence every day. In other words, there are no bygones. It is very much the present and we know that if they could, the Mintoffjani would run riot, wreak havoc and maim and kill just to shut us up.
However, one day I will break totally free and use my real name to submit my comments on this blog. I know I will. And probably Joseph Muscat will be running this country then. It will be my small act of revenge to counter JM’s condoning of the oppression we suffered by calling those years of hell “our golden years”.
It is a shame that despite the PN being in government for over 20 years, people are still scared to use their real name here.
I blame the PN for this, their ‘reconciliation’ will haunt them for ever.
While I fully agree with you that one should be honest enough to say the truth, irrespective of whether this will hurt, and that “being nice” is no sign of maturity, I hope that you will not go on categorising Maltese society, and that includes you and me, as similar to Sicilian society. The comparision is not just, either to us or to Sicilians.
There are individuals, in smaller or bigger numbers, both in Sicily and Malta, who raise the level of maturity to any that individuals in northern Europe can. And, yes, there are others, at both compass points, who fall far short of what is desireable.
To brand the whole of society by generalisation is not helpful.
[Daphne – Society is defined not by its minorities, but by its majority influence.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9538391/Hillsborough-report-Prime-Minister-David-Camerons-statement-in-full.html
We are still a long way.
When it’s wrong, it’s simply wrong, no ifs and buts.
Reconciliation equals dysfunctional police force which is above the law and even unaccountable to the prime minister. It seems as if the LP is in charge of the police force.
The PN seems ‘bla bajd’! Gonzi please grow some balls!
…one crucial aspect of leadership is having the guts to stand up for what is right..
Il-PN bla bajd, Daphne!
Daphne puts us all to shame.
Such a valuable piece when it comes to personal reflection. I could not agree more.
Yet things are not different now than they were then, really. This you confirm by your appraisal of the country’s leaders’ reaction to the asshole’s death.
We still get arrested, taken to court, harassed and victimised by infamous MPs for saying the truth, standing up for what is right, for even attempting to dream that we live in a modern democracy.
Same old, same old.
The problem is that it hurts now more than it did then. Then you expected the pain; now the pain catches you by surprise.
Serves us right, the free ones, to even dare to think that we live in a civilised, modern society.
Yet, I am lucky.
Lucky to feel free even when I am stripped naked in the unlit cold cell in the basement of Floriana police headquarters for being arrested for not saying “sorry” for saying the truth.
The more they lock us up, the more free we feel. The more they try to hurt us, the less pain we feel.
This is not a country. This is a tribe with, as you said, a Sicilian style vindictive mindset that is now the norm.
We have no dignity, self respect, pride.
We think we do.
We have no shame. Even political correctness has been transformed to some kind of veil of decency to make us say insipid, bland and innocuous words that have little value beyond rattle and hum.
No one deserves to be victimised, hurt, damaged, violated; in whatever shape or form.
So, Muscat, if you want to move forward, stand up, acknowledge the bad of the past; ask for forgiveness for the bad things that the predecessors did; then we start to think of you as a possible successor. Until then you are nothing but a clanging noise in the desert.
Gonzi, you shamed us. You have let the people around you do things that would make Lorry Sant proud. You looked the other way, you pleaded ignorance, you broke bread with the enemy within. you let this cancer grow and you did not shake the disease.
You surrounded yourself with half witted low lives who have more or less the same values and MO as the opposition.
If it is yellow, slightly bent, looks like a banana, smells like a banana and tastes like a banana, probably, and i could be wrong here, probably it is a banana.
And now?
All those we told you so’s might come back to haunt you.
We heard about those people who suffered so much under Mintoff when Mintoff’s regime destroyed our lives.
what about us who have had our hell and nightmare relived under this impotent administration?
Where to for us?
You are definitely right but these people are very dangerous.
One can understand why even prominent people talk as they talk because some are afraid.
However I agree with you it’s better not to say anything if you can’t speak the facts. I totally agree with Fr Lucie Smith that Mintoff did untold harm to our country.
He was an extremist within his party and he has left his mark until today on the Labour Party and also Malta.
Labour is fooling our country and its supporters by saying that theirs is a new way of politics. This is old Mintoffian Labour style.
The PN deserves to win because it has remained at the centre of the political spectrum despite Labour’s persistent extremism.
Mintoff and the Mintoffiani took hold of the party for the last 60 years and it is still under their spell. Labour is showing htred and not valid arguments and criticism.
What is the difference between Franco Debono, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Robert Musumeci?
Their criticism is different and their style is different. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is known to be a mad horse although he boast himself od hving strong liberal values which the promotion the divorce referendum has shown and which one might condone. However his attitude and remarks towards the party were disrespectful and the party didn’t deserve that.
Robert Musumeci repeatedly showed his liberal values. I think he is the most reasonable of those who opposed slightly or striongly the PN. He never showed disrespect towards the party.
Franco distinguishes himself from the previous two in no uncertain terms.. He repeatedly showed disrespect towards the party. He doesn’t have any ideology driving his cause. He repeatedly showed that he is envious of his other colleagues. His arguments are futile, very shallow and in line with the labour parties propagand. He never had any misgivings or found it difficult to say that todays PBS is worse than the 80s. Something which no TRUE nationalist would have ever said. So I say that he is a LABOURITE and not a true PN supporter.
One of your very best ever pieces, Daphne.
Reading various comments, it appears you have begun to instill some backbone into the locals. If only all commenters would stop hiding behind pseudonyms and lay it on the line.
We can’t “lay it on the line”. We have obligations towards our families and our employees. I do not have to be responsible for having 30 families without an income; I do not want to put my family through more pain.
Of course, we want to scream and shout yet unless you are an activist, heavily aligned to one or the other party you have no security, no guarantee that there is another knock on the door from the ALE/police to pick you up, or to pull you over on your way home from work and harass you just because some MP wants to “ha nghallmu” just because i do not keel over and let them walk all over me.
I am afraid Mintoff the scumbag lives on in the form of those who make up the underbelly of the Maltese political system.
You should see what The Guardian wrote about Oswald Mosley when he died.
Made me puke.
Malta is like a massive English council estate.
Once you are ‘streetwise’, it’s a piece of piss to sort yourself out with what you want/need.
Keep your head down, be anonymous and duck and dive.
Sorry to say, it will be decades at least until Malta changes.
You should move back to one of those English Housing Estates
At least you ll be at home..
.
Prosit! One of your best articles.
And we were naive enough to think that the violence which Labour thugs think is their sacrosanct right was a thing of the past.
It had to be Mintoff’s funeral which brought it to the surface much like barracudas lurking beneath the surface and ready to strike.
At least Dr Sant had cleaned the party from these terrorists but Dr Muscat has brought them back.
Imagine what is going to happen when they are in power because the spineless Nationalists are handing them the government of these islands on a silver platter.