There has been some discussion on the comments boards of this blog about the nature of fascism and whether the unpleasantness around us fits that description. There are no goose-stepping armies and Poland is not likely to be partitioned soon. That much is certain so you may want to find other names for what is going on.
I’m not uncomfortable with the term ‘fascism’ because to me it represents the concentration and exercise of state power for its own sake rather than at the service of higher aims, justifying and cementing in the process unfairness in society, the suspension of rights and the meltdown of constitutional safeguards where the interests of central power are threatened or not well served.
But even as the debate on what to call it rages, there is a consensus that we live in times where our expectations of public life have shifted from what they were a handful of years ago. And people ask themselves, but what can we do about this?
Well, some ask themselves that. Most would rather not trouble themselves with puzzles they have little hope of solving.
Take what is happening in Malta, and though the comments boards on manueldelia.com are by no means a scientific basis for any form of extrapolation of opinion, it certainly reflects what the commenters themselves are thinking.
It feels in the case of some that they are watching a Biblical movie from the 1950s, the sort of late Cecil de Mille epics scored with 300 man orchestras and with enough extras, elephants, camels and goats to found a new nation in some promised land. They have cringed through the long preamble of a long-suffering people under the yoke of an unreasonable Pharaoh who orders them to produce more bricks, but now they must procure their straw. The stripes on the back of the slaves and the blushes on the water maidens’ cheeks harassed by the guards set the scene for appropriate divine intervention.
Now’s the cue for a Samson, a Moses, a Noah to reluctantly accept God’s command after much doubt and anguish to thunderously put things right. The tyrants taste the vengeance of justice, the sceptical and the incredulous are dazed and awed by the power of the leader they laughed at, and the believers are rewarded for their suffering and their faith.
Of course, these are not histories. They are political myths created by the oldest nationalist movement of them all that created a mythical golden age everyone can feel collective nostalgia for. The political aim is to replicate that divine intervention by harnessing the power of hope and turning it into political action.
The Americans of the middle of the twentieth century loved that stuff. The destiny of the Jewish people to triumph over the oppression imposed on them against the will of God, the heroism of reluctant liberators who seek no personal reward except to see justice as they look upon it from the mountain outside the promised land or as the temple of the Philistines falls upon their heads.
Sometimes we forget just how conditioned we are by these images, just how much we expect wrongs to be righted according to a great plan we need do nothing to push ahead.
In this narrative, there is no scenario in which we never find out who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia or in which Joseph Muscat does not live out the rest of his life never having had to answer for any of the wrongdoing he is suspected of having been up to while in office. Instead, someone somewhere is having a conversation with a burning bush and when all their misgivings are settled, they will walk down from the Sinai and restore order in the force, to mix metaphors.
And of course since we fast-forward through the centuries of the Israelites in Egypt to watch their exodus, we seem to expect our own mythical yet faceless hero to walk down from the Sinai to serve justice on the Labour government sooner rather than later.
Because things seem to be dragging. Viewers are bored of waiting for Daphne’s next great revelation that will force Joseph Muscat to resign. They are unimpressed by the lightning rods thrown by the Daphne Project journalists, seeing Joseph Muscat eating the lightning and shitting the thunder of his perpetual incumbency.
Is it hopeless then? Will things remain unchanged?
For as long as most look away and most of the rest sit and watch like excited spectators at Wimbledon, we are effectively hostages to fortune.
More than enough ‘things’ have happened that would bring about the end of a government with any decency left. Sitting around to hope for another piece of evidence that Keith Schembri laundered millions, that Konrad Mizzi took bribes, that Joseph Muscat knew and covered up for them, that the government is spending more on corrupt deals, that we sold passports to criminals and fugitives, that the state covered up for crime, we’d be silly to expect that any of that is next time going to have an effect which is in any way different than the effect that has already occurred.
And though the country has been blessed with Eddie Fenech Adami, that sole, priceless historical fluke should not lull us into believing anyone is likely to walk down a mountain to liberate us. Those hopes too are the collective abdication of our responsibilities as citizens seeking to follow someone rather than stand up and act ourselves.
Most of us were watching the football world cup final a few days ago. In my household that was a rather noisy affair as my wife is French which makes my children French which means watching the cup final is a very committed affair.
At some point in the game protesters briefly invaded the ground interrupting the game and embarrassing the security services that had until that point delivered an impeccable tournament.
At the time the interruption was annoying. There was then time to reflect when winners and losers of that game were made to wait for 20 minutes after the game was over for Vladimir Putin to invade the pitch. But this time the suits had to get their security right. No more pitch invaders while the big man was stumbling around in the rain.
Think about it. After five weeks of a world cup organised like clock-work with so many happy, smiling people, Vladimir Putin won a worldwide coup of projecting an image of authority, control, an imperial peace governed by security. It made his authoritarianism an enviable model: getting things done, staying safe.
Those lonely protesters during the match, and whatever consequences they have to face quite beyond the formal token prison sentences they are serving, were a rare reminder of dissent. Even if probably unwanted by most at the time for whom the game was the most important thing in the world, the basic rights of dissenters over which Vladimir Putin habitually tramples must be defended.
The waters of the Red Sea will not part and justice will not turn the seas around us into blood to prove that things are not quite right. For all those who want to continue to ignore the locusts and the frogs, it will continue to be possible. Because things can be made to look pretty far more easily by governments with the power and authority to suppress dissent than by those who must abide it.
Hope then, is not enough. Defiance is needed. Protest. Refusal. Even disobedience of illegitimate orders and laws.
And above all patience and perseverance. This story will not necessarily fit in a 90-minute plot arc of a classic Disney movie. Justice is not waiting for the off-screen choir vocalising soaring notes. The curtain does not fall on people’s simple ambition to be free.
Do not wait for a front page in a UK newspaper to end the Joseph Muscat regime. It’s easy to do so because you cannot do anything about it either way. Stick a poster on a road-side tree every time they remove it instead.
If enough people push, the pillars of the Philistines’ temple will give.
