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The Brigate Rosse are not to be confused with Benito Mussolini’s blackshirts or those other aficionados of Adolf Hilter and his Italian stooge. The Red Brigade were a grouping of highly intelligent, frustrated middle-class graduates who thought the revolution should somehow accelerate itself by killing some ‘pigs’… pigs being the establishment.
Needless to say the Brigate Rosse are now in the past tense. Blackshirts and Nazi lovers are not.
When Martin Degiorgio and his rightist grouping issued a press release we were pleased to read it uncensored in The Times. His piece on the Red Brigade was recounted as if the defunct terrorist group had just resurrected from the dead and orchestrated the burning of my door and the attack on Daphne Caruana’s Galizia’s house, not to mention, a lawyer working with the Jesuit Refugee service, a poet and the Jesuits themselves.
Martin Degiorgio conveniently did not refer to the fascists who also attacked innocent lives in Italy such as the Bologna train station massacre. Of course, his inference to the Brigate Rosse was intentional.
Just like back in the 1950s when Senator McCarthy blamed everything on the communists. Hitler did the same by blaming it on the Jews, communists, gypsies and homosexuals. Scapegoats: old hat, but very convenient.
Unlike Degiorgio I am unattached to any ideology other than the one that calls for some common sense. I am simply Maltese with a desire to retain what is great about Malta and do away with all the mediocrities of a small island state, including these new manufactured right-wing idiosyncrasies of jingoism.
Now we have it that Martin Degiorgio, who has no compunction on having his party’s emblem to be a perfect copy of the defunct Italian fascists’ logo – the Movimento Sociale Italiano – will be organising a protest on illegal immigration.
And if that is not enough, Degiorgio attacks those who talk of multiculturalism. I thought that it is the essence of human rights, or have I missed the plot? Maybe not: until some time ago, this newspaper reported that his number plate was personalised with the letters DVX (that’s Latin for Duce for those who haven’t had enough right-wing education). Of course, Degiorgio does not hide his admiration for Benito Mussolini. Duce stands for someone who agreed to the deportation of Jews, the end of parliamentary democracy, the killing of journalists, bombed Basques and Spaniards, murdered politicians, opponents and anyone else who stood in his way, apart from his ill-treatment and mass killings of Ethiopians and Libyans.
Degiorgio’s campaign is as inopportune and ill-timed as Benito’s invasion of Addis Ababa. Needless to say, the police will issue them with a permit. There will be no anarchists, punks or leftist groups clashing with Martin. Because there are no such groupings in Malta.
We have Bonsai societies, ramblers’ groups, the Opus Dei and Birdlife, but no Molotov-throwing anarchists, Mr Degiorgio. This is Malta not Genoa.
We will have to listen to some more extreme talk from the likes of Martin Degiorgio and they will be very well reported, and he will of course mention that two Swedes were raped by Africans in Paceville. And logically it should follow that all Africans are rapists, eh!
Just when we thought that we were truly European, enter Degiorgio with his divisive campaign. The European Union and its representatives in Malta are deafening by their eerie silence. When we all talk of this institution that stands for modernity and diversity, all we read is some silly press communication on the sardine catches in the Bay of Biscay.
Tonio Borg has a very difficult task ahead of him. He is Home Affairs Minister, and it follows that he has to take some very hard decisions. Otto Schily was Germany’s Interior minister and a human rights lawyer, yet in his time at the Home Affairs Ministry he did not confuse human rights with the undeniable rights of German society to live in a democratic environment and not to be confronted with extremism and talk of intolerance. He denied rightist groups from protesting.
Society has a right to develop in a spirit of tolerance and mutual benefit. Martin Degiorgio is anathema to all this. Borg can either look to the future or else to the past. He should not confuse the right to demonstrate with the right to sow more hatred towards immigrants.
Mr Degiorgio will get nothing out of his protest other than increase the level of hate towards immigrants and foreign workers. He will not spell out violence, or condone it but he is intelligent enough to offer the right conditions for a mangled mind to act.
In 1979, Mintoff spent a good two hours pumping adrenaline into anxious looking labourites at a mass meeting and spouting venom at The Times. Hours later thugs ransacked and burnt The Times. To many that day was a turning point. That was the day I stopped laughing when Mintoff would utter his vulgarities about the chandelier (il-linfa) or in other words, a penis.
The police say they can do next to nothing in a free democratic society.
In a democratic society, one does not get one’s front door burnt when they live a stone’s throw away from a police station. When Lowell screams out in a video on his website that there are not enough lampposts for journalists, what are we are supposed to do? Beats me: probably Police Commissioner John Rizzo thinks that this is a prankster’s joke and that we should not take it too seriously.
I am not at all surprised if the Police are taking it a little bit ‘eaaaaasy’. I have met so many police officers and soldiers who empathise with Degiorgio and his lot that I could as well be taking a guided tour in apartheid-era South Africa.
It gets far worse. On Lowell’s site there are a list of Maltese companies that employ foreign workers. They are singled out. If I were Wilfred Kenely of the FOI I would do something about it and if I were Vince Farrugia and Joe Farrugia of the GRTU and the Employers’ Association I would kick ass.
Does someone have to get hurt, very hurt for the authorities to act? All this solidarity is worth nothing if nothing is done, NOW. What matters most is acting now. Now is today, not tomorrow or when someone decides that a wedding is far more important than a bunch of journalists.
The one positive thing is that the attacks have brought journalists from different stables together. Some dissenting colleagues have told me that the culprits could possibly not be rightists. Bollocks.
The hysteria and divisive talk by the likes of Degiorgio and Lowell has led to a climate which makes it easier for anyone with a violent streak to take it out on whoever they see as a pain. In their dreams Degiorgio and Lowell wish for a Malta that is pure and white according to their specifications. Untainted by foreigners, namely Africans.
Now if there is anyone white around it has to be me. I am as white as you can get. I am so white I would be refused entry into a nudist beach. Last Sunday, journalists unusually got together under the umbrella of the newly formed grouping, the Journalists’ Committee, to air their anger at the PM’s office.
The PM was off at a wedding in Gozo and could not make it. But it would have been a wonderful opportunity for some good PR. Unfortunately he thinks that changing his agenda to meet journalists is a weakness. When is someone going to tell him that weakness is often confused with the ability to take quick decisions?
If no one is going to take a decision, then the media is.
First decision is to fight the extremists with our only weapon, the power of the pen, in Malta and abroad. And in the absence of the Brigate Rosse and their blazing guns, I am sorry Martin and Norman: the target has got to be you!
sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt
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