Things have come to a pretty pass when the Prime Minister resurrects the dinosaurs of his party’s past – to quote the chairman of the European Parliament’s anti-money-laundering committee – to instigate violence against that chairman and against Nationalist MEPs who call out the government on its corruption.

Tony Zarb, the former General Workers Union boss, occupied a lot of public space this week with his relentless ill-spelled memes and messages calling critics of the government “traitors” and demanding Werner Langen’s resignation from the European Parliament committee.

I don’t know what was worse: discovering that the obnoxious man who led Malta’s most powerful union for so many years can’t spell simple words or get a politician’s name right, or finding out that even in his pensionable years he remains as nasty, aggressive and uncivilised as he was in his heyday.

Zarb did nothing to discourage people from posting horrible, law-breaking comments on his Facebook Timeline.

He did not delete those comments, and on the contrary, he encouraged them with more and more jingoism against foreigners and traitors. Some comments called, in all seriousness, for David Casa and Roberta Metsola to be stoned. Yes, somebody else put in enthusiastically – let’s drag them onto a roundabout and stone them.

I read that and found myself thinking, why a roundabout? I should have been asking myself, why stoning? But I grew up in 1970s and 1980s Malta, so it wasn’t the savagery that surprised me, but the choice of location. Stoning government critics on a roundabout: they make it sound like they’ve done it before, that most days when we drive past a roundabout, people are being stoned there.

Earlier, at the start of the escalation, things were less hysterical. They were calling for a mob – except that they didn’t use the word mob, of course – to gather at the airport arrivals lounge and pelt Casa and Metsola with eggs and rotten tomatoes as they came through.

That would have meant committing several crimes, not least the breach of airport security in itself, for which the penalties are extremely harsh, but they all discussed this as though it is entirely normal and permissible, right there in their own names on the Facebook Timeline of a former union man with a high public profile linked to the party in government.

The crazy situation became even crazier when who should pop in to say ‘count me in – tell me when they arrive and I’ll be there’, but the artistic director of Valletta 2018, European Capital of Culture.

Yes, Mario Azzopardi was right there in all his lack-of-glory, egging a bunch of savages on and saying he would join them with the eggs and tomatoes. This is the man who is supposed to be promoting and directing Malta’s European cultural status, and instead he’s right in there promoting Third World choices.

Faced with a storm of protests against his behaviour, with stories in the press and questions put to the Prime Minister (“it’s a free country” – when it pays him to say so, and no thanks to him anyway), Tony Zarb just upped the ante and became more defiant instead of packing it in and apologising for the unpleasantness he had caused.

More and more nasty memes and messages, more fascist calls to action, and more and more extremely aggressive comments by supporters of the government.

It reached the stage where it couldn’t be left alone any longer. Many people must have reported Zarb’s posts, pictures and third-party comments to Facebook, because yesterday evening, Facebook deleted his account.

Some people, going by the messages I received, reported individual posts and memes for harassment, and others for promoting graphic violence. In the end, the reason Facebook gave for the deletion of his account was “for promoting graphic violence”.

I have no doubt that by the time this column is in print, Tony Zarb will have rolled back into action by reactivating another Facebook account he has, which he hasn’t been updated for the last seven years, and on which he has just 20 friends.

Nor do I have any doubt that the word will go round the Labour bushfire telegraph, which works so well given how most of them appear to have nothing better to do and no other cultural interests than gluing themselves to Facebook, and Zarb will have thousands of people swarming in with friend requests.

But if he has any sense, he will now tone it down. It’s already bad enough that somebody of his former position should have been censured once by Facebook for promoting graphic violence. Twice would be even more awkward – not that these people care.