GUEST POST: Stop drinking the Kool-Aid

Matthew S sent this in as a comment, but it’s good enough for a guest post.

My God, Kenneth Zammit Tabona has really drunk the Kool-Aid, hasn’t he?

To show us how totally ‘in’ he is, he has now started writing about positive energy.

What next? Prayer meetings or chanting ‘Ommm’?

One-with-nature nude sessions in the countryside? Free Phiten titanium necklaces for everybody? Crystals?

In the article he repeats the oft-repeated myth that people don’t want to be labelled.

Rubbish, and the myth is easily debunked. Of course people want to be labelled, and he’s one of them.

People don’t want to be labelled with anything that’s got negativen connotations, but they have no problem with being labelled per se.

Kenneth Zammit Tabona loves being labelled as a good artist, though the jury’s out on that. He loves being labelled as a spokesman for gay rights, though he only came out of the closet in his 40s, to find that everyone knew already because it was obvious.

He loves being labelled as a great thinker, even though he has a column every Tuesday in The Times to prove that he isn’t one.

He loves to be labelled as a liberal, but lives the sort of conservative life, and has the sort of conservative thoughts, that you might find in a 1930s novel about men approaching pensionable age who have never, but never, lived with anyone other than their mother.

We all love positive labels and want to be labelled magnanimous, generous, brave, loving, caring, professional, intelligent and so on.

Conversely, we don’t like being labelled the opposites of the above. It makes us angry. It makes others angry at us when we do it to them, and label them with something they don’t like.

Kenneth Zammit Tabona is quite happy to be labelled liberal and progressive but will get upset at the far more accurate label of conservative and inward-looking.

Tal-pepe or ħamalli, urbane or ta’ wara’ l-muntanji, Italianate (read sleazy) or Anglo-Saxon (read democratic), ABC1 or C2DE – society thrives on labels and as much as we love to hate them, they are necessary because WE ARE DIFFERENT.

If your lifestyle and mentality are totally alien to those of others, you neither want to socialise with them (even if for no other reason than that you have nothing to talk about) nor be considered as one of them (unless you think it is to your advantage because their label is better than yours and you hope to share it).

What’s the point of pretending there are no labels? There are distinct groups in society and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that. Acknowledging and recognising the weaker members of society gives an impetus to the rest to do something about it, to help, to make things better.

Being labelled with the name of the political party you support is no different. Political parties are not ethnicities, as Joseph Muscat tried with some success to make people believe. When he spoke about coming from a mixed family, he sounded like somebody talking about having racially mixed parents, not parents with different political beliefs that were their personal choice.

Our choice of politics shows our beliefs, our values and our morals, not our race or our blood, things we can’t help. Malta Enterprise chief Mario Vella is a Marxist for example, and that tells you almost all you need to know about him.

Saying that political parties and ideologies are “dead” is ridiculous because we don’t all hold the same beliefs and therefore it is impossible for us all to be united behind one party or in one mass movement. Suggesting as much is the antithesis of democracy and the spirit of totalitarianism. It is precisely because Kenneth Zammit is not a great thinker, not even a common-or-garden thinker, that he can’t understand this.

I personally reject all that Marxism stands for and can never form part of a movement which supports it, and that means clearly that Mario Vella and I are not on the same page. Like the rest of the democratic world, I believe that different political parties are essential to safeguard democracy, so I am obviously not going to be on the same page as people like Joseph Muscat and Kenneth Zammit Tabona, who think in terms of a one-party state.

People are supposed to be proud of their political beliefs. It is what makes us human. Our philosophical thoughts are what elevate us above the rest of the animal kingdom.

Joseph Muscat built his political campaign on four labels: PROGRESSIVE, MODERATE, LIBERAL and MIDDLE CLASS and yet, he somehow hoodwinked his mass movement into thinking that social labelling is history, maybe because they don’t know what those terms really mean.

Renouncing your political label means that:

1) you stand for nothing and have no real thoughts (the infamous granfalloon);

or

2) you’re embarrassed/ashamed of your beliefs and would rather keep them hidden;

or

3) you acknowledge that your political beliefs are deplorable or a failure but still you want to hang onto them.

Being Labour means that you believe in handouts, that you want the state to help you because you can’t be bothered to make the effort to help yourself, that you are comfortable with the rehabilitation of those who did so much to damage Malta and who, as recently as just 10 years ago, were fighting to deny us a European passport.

Being Labour means that you like the way Labour appoints people to important roles, that you prefer a closed and protected economy, that geographic and political isolation doesn’t bother you and that you believe in the state having a big say in people’s lives.

No wonder Kenneth Zammit Tabona isn’t happy to be called Labour and despite voting Labour and promoting Joseph Muscat, he refutes the label ‘Laburist’.

Being Nationalist means you believe in a free and open economy, in self-fulfillment, education, meritocracy, Europe and a small government.

Being Labour and being Nationalist couldn’t be more different.

Kenneth Zammit Tabona is a Laburist. He wants the state to keep him in the manner to which he has become accustomed, through his own effort, so that he no longer has to make that effort.

Labels, except for the purely derogatory which eventually go out of fashion, don’t exist as a means of discrimination but simply to reflect reality. Laburist and Nazzjonalist are, like slim and fat, just adjectives which give an apt description of a person.

If you don’t like being called fat, you’re supposed to go on a diet and take up exercise and not pronounce all adjectives “dead”. If you don’t like being called a ‘Laburist’ even though you vote Labour and sing Labour’s praises, then ask yourself why, and do something about it. The answer is not to say that political parties are dead, but to question your support of a party you are so ashamed to be associated with that you pretend even to yourself that it’s not Labour you support but something called A Movement.