The only positive thing that can be said to have occurred as a result of the arrival of document-less immigrants from Africa is that it has begun to force Malta into the real world. Finally, we are seeing true debate about issues that have nothing to do with partisan politics, with the rights and wrongs of the blue tribe or the red tribe. We are being pushed into talking about the sort of matters to which we never even gave a passing thought before. People who are not accustomed to having an opinion on very much at all have begun to realise that here at last is something about which they do have a view, and more to the point, they are being obliged to reach deep within themselves to ask: “Why is it that I am so afraid, so threatened?” At least, I hope that is what they are doing. Animals have feelings and react to them; human beings are blessed with introspection, which allows them to give their emotions some thought in an attempt at understanding why they feel the way they do.

The arrival of these people has stirred up within the Maltese population terrors and suspicions, deep-seated hatred and fear of the unknown that have lain dormant for decades, perhaps even for generations. It has brought us face-to-face with ourselves, and revived questions of national, religious and ethnic identity. It has confronted us with these two stark questions – who do we think we are, and where do we think we are going – and left us whirling in perplexity and confusion. When those of a fair amount of intelligence receive a shock in their personal or working lives, it makes them question their past, their present, their future, their outlook on life and sometimes even their very sense of identity. Now this is happening to the country as a whole. We have been shocked out of our complacency. We have been startled into the realisation that no, this is not a bubble in which we live after all; it is connected to the rest of the world.

In short, the arrival of people without papers, from Africa, has forced us to grow up.

* * *

It is personal, social, religious and cultural insecurity that propels people into wholly irrational fear of foreigners, of outsiders, or of those who are different. I think you will find that those who hate and fear blacks and Muslims are also tremendously resentful towards, and suspicious of, homosexuals and women (sometimes even when they themselves are women). The four negative qualities of misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and racism have the same psychological root, which is why they are usually present in the same person at the same time. The difference is that people have had to learn how to control their misogyny and homophobia over the past few years, except in the privacy of their living-rooms, because cultural, social and legal changes have made this necessary. We forget that not long ago, Maltese men spoke about women in the same way they now speak about black Africans: women were going to take their jobs; women were going to take over; if you gave women an inch they would take a mile; giving women their rights would cause social upheaval and religious chaos; women should be kept within the four walls of their home and not allowed to run all over the place; women had no brains and were incapable of holding down a proper job; women should not be given the vote because they couldn’t think and were gullible; women were dangerous and had mysterious gulling qualities. Even more recently, Maltese men were (and still are) talking about homosexuals in a similar fashion – homosexual men, that is, and not homosexual women, because the former are more threatening to men who are emotionally and sexually insecure, and this kind of hatred towards others always has its root in some kind of similar insecurity. Homosexual women, on the other hand, represent an erotic fantasy and consequently, are not threatening at all, but rather the opposite.

People who are secure in themselves do not wrap their arms around the loaf on their table, lest some desperate African try to steal it. They do not feel that their Catholicism is threatened by the presence of a Muslim next door. They do not reel in horror at the thought of sharing friendship with a homosexual. They do not assume that the woman in the office is the secretary who makes the coffee, or prefer to go unemployed rather than take orders from a woman (or a black). At the thought of living among people who are different to themselves, their reaction is not one of disturbed nervousness, but of optimistic interest. Here, they think, is something to enliven the greyness of dull uniformity, of the sound of 400,000 people talking to each other.

* * *

Similarly, the growth of the lunatic fringe and the radical right only serves to add to the gaiety of the nation, regardless of the fear with which some regard them. Like all negative forces, they are fundamentally unattractive, and require conditions of great social and economic instability in which to succeed in their aims. In a stable society, they merely serve to enliven an otherwise humdrum scenario by being the political equivalent of street theatre. If people like Norman Lowell and Philip Beattie wish to embarrass themselves by posturing with microphones in front of crowds of people to whom they obviously deem themselves socially and intellectually superior, applauded by those whom I can best describe in Maltese, as qlafat and criecer, then the fact that this is now a free country puts them at liberty to do so. Mark Montebello and the small group of counter-protestors on the ruins of the opera house were also at liberty to express their displeasure at the sentiments espoused by the lunatic fringe and the radical right, and the police should not have removed them from where they were standing in Republic Street, given that they were merely holding placards and not setting off hand grenades. It is a sign that we are growing into the world outside when the lunatic fringe and the radical right march down Malta’s main street and counter-protestors go peacefully into the square to express their own views without violence. Perhaps the next time it happens, the police will see their role for what it really is: ensuring that the lunatic fringe and the radical right do not attack those who fail to agree with them, rather than removing the counter-protestors for upsetting a few undemocratic qlafat.

* * *

I once read a very good book about the rise of the radical right in Europe in the first part of the 20th century – Franco, Mussolini, Hitler. If I could remember its name or who wrote it, then I would recommend it – but I can’t remember either. I do remember parts of it, though. The author posed the question as to why fascism caught the public imagination throughout much of Europe, but not in Britain, which was suffering from very much the same destabilising effects of rampant unemployment, hunger and poverty. He concluded that it was because of the ‘English’ tendency not to take too seriously those who embarrass themselves by working up a head of steam about political causes, and to back off and dismiss such individuals as a joke instead. He also theorised that it was because the ‘English’ prize individual liberty dearly (and still do – look at the virulent opposition to the identity cards we take for granted) and fascism represented the deepest possible threat to this valued privilege. Sir Oswald Mosley and his band of black-or-brown shirts were left to strut around in a vacuum, preaching to the converted few, and drawing mocking cat-calls when they appeared in public. For the same reason, the author wrote, the communist party never grew beyond ‘joke’ size in Britain, either.

The same will happen in Malta, despite the fears of those who are taking the lunatic fringe and the radical right too seriously. This is not necessarily because the Maltese are treating Norman Lowell and Philip Beattie as a joke (we aren’t), or because we treasure personal liberty (we don’t, either). It is because fascism is wholly out of tune with the times. It was the product of a particular socio-economic climate in the first half of the 20th century, and that climate allowed it to grow. Preaching fascism now, as Norman Lowell and Philip Beattie are doing, is like preaching a return to the faldetta or the bustle for women, and to large moustaches and top-hats for men. If Lowell and Beattie see the past as a utopia to which they would like to return, they are free to buy a piece of land and set up a commune in which life must be lived according to Edwardian rules. What they should not do is attempt – vaingloriously – to turn the entire country into such a commune and drag us all into it, just so that they may have the pleasure of living out their personal fantasies. They must learn to accept the fact that their personal fantasies are not necessarily ours, and that democracy has ensured that we do not have to live out their fantasies against our will.

* * *

I was watching the television news of the radical right meeting, with a very young person who shall remain nameless. I wondered out loud why anybody would want to think and behave like that when life is so short, the world so full of interesting variety, and none of us is going to live forever. Why do these people waste their precious days by trying to halt change, instead of just going with the flow and embracing it? Why are they so afraid of life in its infinite variety? What a bunch of Luddites. The very young person shook his head and said: “Come on! Can’t you see that they’re just people who are unhappy with how their lives have turned out, and that they’re taking out their anger on others?” A not-so-young person put it the same way, but differently, later on: “They’re just sublimating their personal hang-ups into this form of public aggression. Nothing new; it’s been done before, throughout history.” At least, in Malta in 2005, the results will not be as world-shattering as they were in Germany in 1935. We can look at Lowell and Beattie, shake our heads, and get on with the business of living.