Former General Workers Union boss on the rampage: rabble-rousing against Maltese MEPs Casa and Metsola

These attempts at stirring up the mob to launch assaults on ‘enemies of the people’ belong firmly in Malta’s Labour past and not its Labour present. But former General Workers Union boss Tony Zarb is not about to let go of that great nostalgic era when a Labour union leader or party boss could trigger the mob, with a few choice words of incitement, into setting fire to buildings, ransacking homes or physically attacking people in the street.

Is Prime Minister Muscat going to dissociate himself from these attacks on politicians of the rival party who are doing their duty? Is he going to ‘condemn’ Tony Zarb? I use the word because it is one of their favourites.

Or is Malta’s liberal and progressive prime minister going to stand by while one of the country’s most prominent political operators urges members of the public to intimidate two members of the European Parliament with whom he does not agree?

Labour trolls are already swarming into Werner Langen’s Facebook page to insult and denigrate him in a spectacularly sub-literate and offensive fashion, making the people of Malta look like a bunch of crack-crazed whackos who left school at eight.

And to paraphrase and adapt Tony Zarb’s own words: we need to defend ourselves and our country against these people because they’re nuts as well as corrupt.

And purely as a matter of interest: does Mr Zarb believe that repeatedly misspelling Roberta Metsola’s name in a variety of ways is some kind of sophisticated insult?