First published on my Facebook page on 29 May:
I’m not one to lose much sleep about the rants of l-orizzont’s editorials. Today though it is essentially, though not necessarily consciously, synthesising the true agenda of the criminal gang that has taken over the mind of the zombie that was once the Labour Party.
L-orizzont today argues that the next election, of which the certain outcome is the inescapable victory of the Labour Party, will do more than re-elect Labour for 5 (maybe less?) years. It will also signify a blanket absolution of Joseph Muscat and the rest of his criminal gang. The logic of this is that in a democracy the people are sovereign. In choosing to confirm The Joseph as prime minister, the mob will have tried and absolved him of the crimes he is accused of and cleansed him in a plebiscitary baptism that sees him leave Castille on 2nd June stained and sullied and re-enter it on the 5th pure and virginal.
This is by no means a novel notion. Fascism, you may be surprised to remember, relies on popular will as much as any mass political movement built on grass-roots mobilisation. Fascism does not steal power from the people. Nor does it sit on it by some claimed right like the numbered kings of old. Fascism is empowered by popular will. It is a formula first crafted by Napoleon Bonaparte who in marrying the notions of the French Revolution with a golden age mediaeval fantasy of ancient French glory, secured his election as dictator, later dictator for life, later still dynastic emperor by a series of plebiscites.
The theory is that there is no greater sovereignty than popular will. If the people decide, they must be right. Vox populi, vox dei. The people are the supreme judge, the supreme elector, the supreme sovereign and if it is their choice to delegate away their powers to a demagogue, they must be right.
Is The Joseph a baby-eating, concentration-camp-cook Nazi? Of course he isn’t. But what we are experiencing now is no less a fascist Bonapartist take-over than any previous attempt by only slightly more flamboyant characters before him, and I shall point out the patterns.
Firstly the notion of centrally and exclusively concentrated power. This is at the heart of the politics of the Malta Labour Party. Some of you may remember the 1992 election that has many parallels to this one. The PN government had just completed its first term and the micro-economics of the people’s pockets were in boom.
But contrast the political agenda of the incumbent party at that election with Labour’s today. When people’s pockets felt fuller, the PN promoted solidarjeta’. When people felt excited about the prospects of new personal wealth, the PN spoke of valuri. When confidence in the government’s leadership was at its highest, the PN spoke of sussidjarjeta’: and went about building institutions that would limit its power: the Ombudsman, the Constitutional Court, Local Councils, independent planning regulators and so on.
How does the present incumbent deal with the current phase of relative micro-economic wellbeing. It humiliates the Ombudsman, emasculates the courts, attempts to bribe the press into silence, and suffocates Local Councils by closing their funding tap. It concentrates power and promotes a soulless agenda where the pursuit of wealth trumps any other consideration.
For this too is a second tenet of fascism that Labour wholeheartedly adopts: the pursuit of material gain as a moral standard above any other. Do not be fooled by the not entirely credible claims about the reduction in poverty. This is no bleeding heart socialism. On the contrary this is a program built on the notion that it does not matter that The Joseph and The Gang siphon off money to their personal accounts, ‘because I’m better off now’.
L-orizzont today argues that the next election, of which the certain outcome is the inescapable victory of the Labour Party, will do more than re-elect Labour for 5 (maybe less?) years. It will also signify a blanket absolution of Joseph Muscat and the rest of his criminal gang. The logic of this is that in a democracy the people are sovereign. In choosing to confirm The Joseph as prime minister, the mob will have tried and absolved him of the crimes he is accused of and cleansed him in a plebiscitary baptism that sees him leave Castille on 2nd June stained and sullied and re-enter it on the 5th pure and virginal.
This is by no means a novel notion. Fascism, you may be surprised to remember, relies on popular will as much as any mass political movement built on grass-roots mobilisation. Fascism does not steal power from the people. Nor does it sit on it by some claimed right like the numbered kings of old. Fascism is empowered by popular will. It is a formula first crafted by Napoleon Bonaparte who in marrying the notions of the French Revolution with a golden age mediaeval fantasy of ancient French glory, secured his election as dictator, later dictator for life, later still dynastic emperor by a series of plebiscites.
The theory is that there is no greater sovereignty than popular will. If the people decide, they must be right. Vox populi, vox dei. The people are the supreme judge, the supreme elector, the supreme sovereign and if it is their choice to delegate away their powers to a demagogue, they must be right.
Is The Joseph a baby-eating, concentration-camp-cook Nazi? Of course he isn’t. But what we are experiencing now is no less a fascist Bonapartist take-over than any previous attempt by only slightly more flamboyant characters before him, and I shall point out the patterns.
Firstly the notion of centrally and exclusively concentrated power. This is at the heart of the politics of the Malta Labour Party. Some of you may remember the 1992 election that has many parallels to this one. The PN government had just completed its first term and the micro-economics of the people’s pockets were in boom.
But contrast the political agenda of the incumbent party at that election with Labour’s today. When people’s pockets felt fuller, the PN promoted solidarjeta’. When people felt excited about the prospects of new personal wealth, the PN spoke of valuri. When confidence in the government’s leadership was at its highest, the PN spoke of sussidjarjeta’: and went about building institutions that would limit its power: the Ombudsman, the Constitutional Court, Local Councils, independent planning regulators and so on.
How does the present incumbent deal with the current phase of relative micro-economic wellbeing. It humiliates the Ombudsman, emasculates the courts, attempts to bribe the press into silence, and suffocates Local Councils by closing their funding tap. It concentrates power and promotes a soulless agenda where the pursuit of wealth trumps any other consideration.
For this too is a second tenet of fascism that Labour wholeheartedly adopts: the pursuit of material gain as a moral standard above any other. Do not be fooled by the not entirely credible claims about the reduction in poverty. This is no bleeding heart socialism. On the contrary this is a program built on the notion that it does not matter that The Joseph and The Gang siphon off money to their personal accounts, ‘because I’m better off now’.
The improvement in people’s lives between 1992 and 1987 was astronomical: in terms of wealth, mobility and access to public services of unprecedented quality. And in 1992, in seeking re-election, the PN spoke of sharing the wealth, decentralising power, and ensuring no one is left behind and rooting values of right and wrong in public administration.
The improvement in people’s lives between 2017 and 2013 is an incident of the cycle of the perfect storm Malta weathered in 2008-2013 when the worst financial crisis in living memory hit the world. And yet in seeking re-election the Labour Party appeals to greed as its central political theme.
Because only greed can allow decent, every day, hard-working, tax-paying honest folks to close an eye, or two, at The Joseph’s crimes. Only a greedy – and utterly unjustified – fear of compromising material wealth, can allow someone who is not an accomplice to crime to excuse it.
But the third and most damning parallel with classical fascism that we are experiencing is the attempt, by all accounts successful, of creating an alternative morality within the community. Fascism seeks to make ordinary, decent Christians into Hitler’s willing executioners. It creates a morality that replaces intuition and simple human decency. Is The Joseph wanting to make us executioners? Of course not! But he does want us to become his judge and jury, replacing the institutions of the land and to absolve him of his crimes past and ignore his crimes future in spite of the fact that we would not do such a thing if we followed our intuitive moral compass that tells us that crime must not pay.
He wants us to follow in the footsteps of his Police Commissioner and enjoy fried rabbit rather than keep him in check. He wants us to follow his Attorney General and pretend our in-tray is empty rather than do our job and throw him right where he belongs. He wants us to be lulled in a false sense of security, drugged by an addiction to trickling moneys, ignoring the reality around him and by extension around us.
L-orizzont’s and Labour’s plea for permanent and absolute absolution come Saturday is the starkest warning that the independence of our institutions – the true backbone of our democratic makeup – will, come the 5th of June, be utterly crushed under fascist populism and plebiscitary democracy. In between the smiles and clear brows, the few who are plainly doing their job without fear or favour like Magistrate Bugeja have received chilling warnings about what to expect in but a week’s time. The people’s courts will rule in place of professional and independent judges whom The Joseph cannot rally in frenzied support or intimidate into cowering submission.
The suppression of our institutions that has started in earnest during the last four years must be completed in this revolution that The Joseph is half way through. The revolution will end when the monopolisation of power is complete and when no one is left to stand up to him and his as they siphon off the wealth they are supposed to help create for the rest of us into their stashes hidden around the more obscure tax havens around the world: havens as secretive as Panama but without quite as leaky servers as Mossack Fonseca’s.
Are you going to stop this?
The improvement in people’s lives between 2017 and 2013 is an incident of the cycle of the perfect storm Malta weathered in 2008-2013 when the worst financial crisis in living memory hit the world. And yet in seeking re-election the Labour Party appeals to greed as its central political theme.
Because only greed can allow decent, every day, hard-working, tax-paying honest folks to close an eye, or two, at The Joseph’s crimes. Only a greedy – and utterly unjustified – fear of compromising material wealth, can allow someone who is not an accomplice to crime to excuse it.
But the third and most damning parallel with classical fascism that we are experiencing is the attempt, by all accounts successful, of creating an alternative morality within the community. Fascism seeks to make ordinary, decent Christians into Hitler’s willing executioners. It creates a morality that replaces intuition and simple human decency. Is The Joseph wanting to make us executioners? Of course not! But he does want us to become his judge and jury, replacing the institutions of the land and to absolve him of his crimes past and ignore his crimes future in spite of the fact that we would not do such a thing if we followed our intuitive moral compass that tells us that crime must not pay.
He wants us to follow in the footsteps of his Police Commissioner and enjoy fried rabbit rather than keep him in check. He wants us to follow his Attorney General and pretend our in-tray is empty rather than do our job and throw him right where he belongs. He wants us to be lulled in a false sense of security, drugged by an addiction to trickling moneys, ignoring the reality around him and by extension around us.
L-orizzont’s and Labour’s plea for permanent and absolute absolution come Saturday is the starkest warning that the independence of our institutions – the true backbone of our democratic makeup – will, come the 5th of June, be utterly crushed under fascist populism and plebiscitary democracy. In between the smiles and clear brows, the few who are plainly doing their job without fear or favour like Magistrate Bugeja have received chilling warnings about what to expect in but a week’s time. The people’s courts will rule in place of professional and independent judges whom The Joseph cannot rally in frenzied support or intimidate into cowering submission.
The suppression of our institutions that has started in earnest during the last four years must be completed in this revolution that The Joseph is half way through. The revolution will end when the monopolisation of power is complete and when no one is left to stand up to him and his as they siphon off the wealth they are supposed to help create for the rest of us into their stashes hidden around the more obscure tax havens around the world: havens as secretive as Panama but without quite as leaky servers as Mossack Fonseca’s.
Are you going to stop this?