“They want to instill fear to stop the country from progressing. I tell them only one thing - you don’t stand a chance. You have fun with your blogs and the books you revel in - we will reply by creating more work, investment and wealth for the people.” That was Robert Abela burying his head in the sand.
A 750-page book, ‘Pilatus - a laundromat bank in Europe’, had just been published. The revelations in that book would have brought down the government in any civilised country. The publication of the detailed report by an independent international reputable company on the crimes committed at Pilatus bank and the complicit inaction of the FIAU and MFSA should have caused an earthquake. That book provided incontrovertible evidence of how the Attorney General and the police conspired to pervert the course of justice. It reveals the sordid details of the concerted efforts of the AG and the police to protect Antoniella Gauci, the daughter and sister of Robert Abela’s canvassers and his former clients.
Antoniella Gauci, together with Ali Sadr Hasheminejad and other Pilatus officials should have been criminally prosecuted for a long list of crimes. The magistrate who conducted the Pilatus inquiry directed the AG and the police to prosecute her. Instead the AG guaranteed her impunity.
The AG and the police not only ignored the magistrate but overturned his decrees. Robert Aquilina’s book exposes the utter lawlessness that Labour created to protect its own and to cover-up the alleged crimes of its friends - the Aliyevs, Brian Tonna, Adrian Hillman, Keith Schembri, Chen Cheng.
Robert Abela’s response to those shocking revelations was detestable. Abela proclaimed his disdain for books and sneered at those who write them. His active hostility to the very idea of books reveals a proud self-satisfied ignorance. His arrogant contempt exposes his authoritarian populist streak.
Instead of considering the revelations carefully and responding cautiously and conscientiously, Abela denigrates the facts by ignoring them. Instead of resorting to informed evidence-based argumentation, the prime minister pretends those facts don’t exist. Rather than demanding the resignation of the AG responsible for perverting the course of justice, he simply looks away.
Abela is taking an unsettling path - he is now deploying the type of anti-intellectualism witnessed in 1930s Germany, in 1950s McCarthyism, or in Mao’s cultural revolution. Abela’s not the first authoritarian leader to wield anti-intellectualism for his own ends.
On 10th May 1933, 25,000 books were burnt in 34 university towns across Germany. They included works by Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Ernest Hemingway, and Helen Keller. Hitler had been chancellor for only a few months. Books that promoted independent thought constituted a threat to Hitler’s agenda. His response was to ban them. As Hitler’s supporters publicly burnt those books with delight, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels declared “you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past”.
Abela hasn’t started burning books yet - but he might as well. He mocked those who write books. He was pandering to that demographic amongst which he enjoys overwhelming support. His message to them is that he couldn’t care less about books, or their authors.
Abela knows that the truth will sink him. He’s acutely aware that the sickening revelations about Caruana Galizia’s assassination brought down Joseph Muscat. He’s right to fear the power of the pen. And that is why he’s denigrating books and shaming those who write them. His smugness in ignorance is simply a means to pander to that manipulable section of the electorate.
Abela’s tactics are all too obvious. He is disparaging books and besmirching their authors in an attempt to protect himself from the powerful truth they wield. He dismisses books as a waste of time, a useless pursuit, a wasteful luxury. His populist anti-intellectualism is just a ruse to keep an iron grip on the narrative and to distract the public from the truth.
Abela is simply rejecting facts, logic and reason and declaring himself superior to those who engage in facts, express ideas and write books. He, unlike those “bloggers” and “authors” is interested only in creating work, investment and wealth. He is above the pettiness of books, ideas and intellect. He’s not interested in facts and evidence.
Abela’s aim is to discredit and defame those authors and bloggers as wasters who are of no use to his society - and who deserve the public’s contempt. Robert Abela is sowing the seeds of a new culture war.
We’ve seen it before from Labour. Dom Mintoff was the champion of division. He lampooned his opponents for wearing suits, for speaking English, for behaving civilly and speaking politely. He created a false division between intellectuals and labourers. The shipyard workers were Mintoff’s new aristocracy.
But Mintoff was an intellectual himself. He was an architect and civil engineer. He was a Rhodes scholar educated at Hertford College,Oxford where he earned a Masters in Science and Engineering.
Mintoff was no fool. He was highly educated. He used his anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism as a weapon for his own benefit. His was just a sly performance to persuade the common person by reinforcing the perceived threat of the intellectual class. This was just anti-intellectual posturing by a man more educated than most. He presented himself as the politician who represented the poorly educated at a time when that demographic was the overwhelming majority.
Labour has had a long relationship with anti-intellectualism. But now Abela has fished out that weapon once more. Except this time, unlike with Mintoff, it’s not just posturing. Robert Abela is no Rhodes scholar. He’s no Oxford graduate. His contempt for knowledge, ideas, books is real. And his anti-intellectual crusade can only cause concern. His systemic denigration of the facts only sows despair and trepidation of what he might do next, and of how far he will go.
The 19th century author Heinrich Heine prophetically wrote “where one burns books, one will soon burn people”.