If you stretch out the history of Malta on a centuries-long timeframe, and divide the epochs by economic-demographic processes, on a most basic and material categorical level, you would inevitably end up with the conclusion that currently, in Malta, we are still transitioning from the phase of Catholic-feudal barbarity to Western cosmopolitanism.
If you deduct the national character of this process, or at least, remove the prerequisites it obliges on its people to preserve the nation, the ongoing historical process may indicate that the Maltese were never meant to stay on the islands, that it is logical that the birth-rates are declining heavily and that the new Maltese are being re-born outside Malta, who have given rise to a distinct Maltese world from the islands, ever since the mass migration started in the British colonial era.
This is not necessarily the correct analysis or potential outcomes but it is a very rudimentary theory standing on basic material facts. On the other hand, we can not ignore the development of the nation, which has indeed developed significantly in the past decades but remains stuck with struggles of the past.
As a society by itself and on its own, Malta’s own internal struggles were mostly centred around the fight against Catholic barbarity and its social and institutional consequences. The political struggle of today is defined by the Labour Party which is trying to stay in power and the Opposition that wants to topple it, but the fundamental enemies in this struggle remain the same: ignorance, censorship, conservative stagnation and class rule. Civil liberties were just part of the previous struggle against Catholic barbarity of alta’s political and social-economic system, but these are no longer the necessary characteristic that makes one side progressive or not.
When Labour resisted the conservative assault against by the Church in the 1960s, it was fighting against the whole Maltese-paradigm. The economy was needed for survival and future prosperity but the true revolution was in the mind: the fight against superstition and outright stupidity. It is the Labour Party itself that will admit, today, that the Labour Party had to combat ignorance, illiteracy and superstition with genuine memories of Dom Mintoff advising his followers to stop giving their will to the priests and to stop making as much children as rabbits.
Today, the Labour Party is justifying its illiberal state with the same kind of ignorance that it fought in the 1960s. As Labour tentatively builds a one-party state by controlling all institutions, with the latest attempt being the judiciary, the Labour Party is justifying this process with its manipulation of the media and the press and the information industry. Every day, the Labour Party propaganda machine churns out and propagates its narrative profusely with public resources, and the result of this media landscape is a continued regression in intelligence. The Labour Party can only justify its insane and outlandish behaviour with a robust propaganda machine that persistently lies and distorts the truth.
We moved on from Catholic superstition to fight illiberal ideology, yet the characteristics of today’s ignorance are the same: censorship, propaganda, superstition, no critical thinking, and outright ignorance and stupidity. Politicians like Alex Agius Saliba can thrive only in this environment.
It seems to me that the fundamental political struggles in Malta have remained the same. Malta is struggling to make progress, but the fundamental leap in this progress is not GDP growth, but a leap in literacy, education, thinking, culture and ideology.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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