Guest post: MINTOFF – LIAR, CHEAT, AND PLAGIARIST
A Nationalist MP, the Hon. Lino Gauci Borda, once rose in Parliament and exposed Dom Mintoff for blatant plagiarism.
He said that when Mr Mintoff had switched from begging for Integration with Britain to demanding independence, a large chunk of his fiery declaration was lifted, word for word, from Hitler’s declaration of war.
Mintoff defended himself against Dr Gauci Borda’s statement in parliament by lying, and by joking about it during a youth rally. He ridiculed Dr Gauci Borda.
Gauci Borda kien qed jitkessah. Dom had never read Hitler. He hadn’t a clue what Hitler had written. He was merely giving voice to the thoughts of many. Gauci Borda was a real kiesah – meaning, he deserved to be roughed up by thugs.
But Dr Gauci Borda was right. Mintoff had lifted, literally verbatim, his demand for independence from Britain from Adolf Hitler’s declaration of his intent to invade Poland.
So Mintoff not only plagiarised, and plagiarised Hitler at that, but he also lied about it in parliament.
When Mintoffians claim that we are what we are because of Mintoff, how right they are.
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Apparently, a long holiday was not enough for you to recover from the shock of Dom Mintoff’s send-of.
As far as this post is concerned, that quote does not seem to figure anywhere among Hitler’s speeches. (and the bit about “fighting other people’s battles” does not really make sense in that context)
Gauci Borda was probably hoaxed (to be kind). As you seem to have been.
[Daphne – Gosh, you’ve read Hitler’s entire ouevre pretty quickly, haven’t you. Mintoff’s send-off (not ‘of’) was not a shock to me, but entirely expected. I sort of specialise in Maltese thinking and attitudes, remember. My job is to comment on them, not to think the same way.]
Hitler’s speeches, especially those made in before the Reichstag, are all online.
Besides, Germany never actually declared war on Britain – it was the other way round.
You really should try to be less gullible.
I’m glad I gave you a moment of pure pleasure by writing “of” instead of “off”. You can’t have had many of those, lately.
Daphne, I’m sorry to say that this guy is right.
I looked up the quotation on Google Books and Google Scholar.
It simply does not exist.
Be careful, someone’s hoodwinking you.
Obsor. The post nowhere says that Hitler declared war on Britain. That’s your twisting of facts. What the post said is that Hitler declared war. In the Reichstag speech, Hitler “declared war” on Western democacies.
Apart from trying to turn Gauci Borda’s serious accusation into a joke during a small youth rally, Dom Mintoff never really denied this plagiarism from Hitler.
Besides being said in Parliament, the same charges of plaigiarim from Hitler were re-printed with great prominence in the book “MINTOFF, Ghalliem u Mexxej” circulated by the thousands as an official publication by the Nationalist Party (page 171).
Mr Mintoff had every opportunity to deny this charge publicly and to clear his name from this gross libel.
He never denied the charge in Parliament where the charge had been made. He never denied it at all. He never sued for libel. He was explicitly accused of aping Adolph Hitler, and never sued for libel. He just baqa tahtha.
It’s quite simple, Mr/Ms Chronicle. Adolf Hitler must be just about the most researched and written about figure in human history.
You have all the resources of the world-wide web at your disposal.
See if you can find a reference – just one – to this speech.
An amazing piece of journalistic research, the like of which unfortunately we never see in our newspapers.
Imagine The Times stating and proving that Mintoff was a proven liar, by quoting this piece or doing their own research. Probably too afraid that the fire-starter’s season will soon be open after the next election.
Mintoff did not plagiarise Hitler. Wherever Adolf said “German people” Dom substituted “Maltese”.
you are an idiot
Dr Saliba, this was a hoax. Look up the quotation on Google, Google Books, and Google Scholar. Adolf Hitler never wrote / said those words.
Actually it is he who alleges who must prove. Whoever has posted this guest post should quote chapter and verse. Otherwise, people are hoodwinking DCG here. And that’s not on, man.
Had Mintoff not been fully aware that Gauci Borda had actually discovered the source of his quotation from a Hitler speech, undoubtedly he would have taken steps against his accuser.
To me that is conclusive proof that Mintoff knew that his plagiarism had been well and truly discovered. I do not have the spare time or the inclination to plough through all Hitler’s voluminous speeches to rediscover the wheel.
Mintoff did not deny it and I draw my reasonable conclusion.
Could it be that Hitler actually copied Mintoff?
What about ‘Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox’ (Mintoff)? This translates into the phrase ‘Duetschland uber alles’, a phrase so often used by Hitler.
“Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox’ is also reminiscent of the ‘Britain First’ slogan of Oswald Mosley, leader of British fascists in the 1930s when Mintoff was studying in the UK.
For that matter, Joseph ‘mini-Mintoff’ Muscat plagiarised Mussolini when he titled an article “Better one day as a lion than a hundred days as a sheep” in which he urged Alfred Sant to call Mintoff’s bluff in 1997. This was one of the usual bombastic slogans of the Duce.
Hitler never uttered the words written on the left, neither in German nor English during his 1939 speech at Reichstag, nor in any other of his “famous” speeches.
It’s possible that Mintoff borrowed some ideas from Hitler’s speeches, but he did not copy whole chunks verbatim as Gauci Borda is suggesting.
The “children and our children’s children” bit comes from his 1942 Berlin speech, which is quite unique in that it was part of a prayer and is frequently cited as proof that Hitler was not an atheist.
Anyway, you should probably ask a real military/war historian, but I seriously doubt the veracity of your claim.
How could Hitler have said that the German people fought battles for other people? That’s a purely Maltese obsession. And of course it’s erroneous.
Hitler did make an address to the Reichstag on 1st September 1939, but none of the text above appears therein.
(Before anyone accuses me of being a Nazi, know that it took me all of five seconds of Googling to learn this.)
“How could Hitler have said that the German people fought battles for other people? That’s a purely Maltese obsession. And of course it’s erroneous.”
Hitler would have put it in other words. He would have said “Mitna ta’ xejn, mitna ghal barrani, imnejn sa fejn?”
Actually can you daphne tell us from where exactly this piece of writing is taken. from the actual discourse it is being taken as it does not figure anywhere. however germany declared war on america and in no instance did daphne say that germany declared war on britain.
Is there any doubt that Labour in general, and Mintoff in particular are/were National Socialists?
Every Labourite I speak to accepts they are National Socialists.
When I try to explain that true socialists are International Socialists they laugh at me.
The only so-called socialists in Europe that are against being in the EU.
The PN are more socialist than the PL are ever likely to be.
Despite not featuring anywhere in Hitler’ speeches as far as I know still Mintoff didn’t deny that he got it from somewhere.
He almost admitted he got it from somewhere. It might have also featured in some other speech and not the one mentioned of 1939. However Daphne should get it right and get the original on this website.
The onus is on the person making the accusation to prove his or her case beyond reasonable doubt. I have the book from which the excerpt is scanned and had tried to find the reference. The closest I got were two famous speeches, one in January and the other in September, none of which have any of these words. Of course, I look at translations rather than the original language. Second, the “message” is similar to past and present Labour rhetoric. The accusation is plausible but on the basis of what I found on the Internet it is improbable.
Hmm.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120913/local/Mintoff-Foundation-creator-in-jail.436685
Daphne, I admire your work but in this case I think you are using a MaltaToday style of headline for what appears to be only an unconfirmed case of plagiarism.