I am in no doubt at all that the persons who committed this act of violence against my home and my family are connected with Malta’s nascent fascist and neo-Nazi movement.

For the past two years, we have chosen to think of these people and their terrible beliefs as a hilarious joke rather than a dangerous threat to our civilised way of life. We have been fools. While focusing our thoughts and energies on the perceived threat of immigration, we have been blind and oblivious to the real evil burgeoning in our midst. The alarm should have sounded when a Nazi candidate polled 1,700 votes in the election that gave us our first round of MEPs. That’s at least 1,700 Maltese Nazis accounted for. There would be many more who preferred to vote for the Nationalist Party or the Labour Party, out of some strange loyalty.

Everywhere it raises its hideous head, Nazism is considered to be an appalling anomaly, an aberrance of thought. In Malta, it is considered funny, or worse still, it is taken seriously for the wrong reasons. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard otherwise respectable citizens say of a prominent neo-Nazi: “Well, he has a point.”

He “has a point”? I am astonished that these people, despite their high level of education in other fields, are so poorly informed when it comes to political thought, crowd psychology, the sentiments of young male misfits, and recent European history. You cannot have a nice Nazi or a Nazi who “has a point”. The two are mutually exclusive. Nazism and fascism celebrate intolerance, hatred and fear at every level. Women are chattels, homosexuals, those with physical problems, and “coloured people” are not worthy of life. Ideas and opinions are not permitted unless they are Nazi ideas and opinions. Nazism practises severe violence against those who oppose it, and then claims that it is acting in the interests of society and of the state. It is violent, militaristic, and full of hate. Nazism is not a joke. We should not treat it as such, and we should begin calling it by its true name, and not use euphemisms like “the far right movement”. This is not the “far right movement”. These people are practitioners of what Adolf Hitler preached.

Nazism and fascism are on the rise all over Europe. No government treats it with kid gloves and societies know to despise it. It was bound to happen here too, because we are part of the rest of the world. The hideous creed that attracts to it mainly embittered, inadequate and disillusioned young men, men with problems in their lives, led by sour and evil older versions of themselves, was bound to catch on in Malta. We have our fair share of unhappy youths searching for significance in their lives, and plenty of nasty older men who seek to delude them. Those who are searching for that elusive something are attracted to Nazism in the same way they might be attracted to any other creed. It gives them a sense of belonging and meaning to their lives. Having a son who is a neo-Nazi should be as frightening to parents as having a son who is on drugs. It is a sign that there is something wrong with his psychology, a sign that he needs help. It is not something he will grow out of.

Maltese parents are repeatedly warned about the dangers of hard and soft drugs. I have seen no warnings to parents about the dangers of Nazism, what to do if your son is attracted to this evil creed, how to notice the symptoms. Thirty years ago, when the Moonies were thought to be a threat, you couldn’t escape the information campaigns and warnings to parents in schools and in church, the main channels of communication. The Moonies were not a real threat then, but Nazism is a real threat now and no one is paying attention. Perhaps it is because the parents are neo-Nazis, speaking against those who are different with a contempt that affects their children too. Maybe the British should not have bothered, and instead allowed us to be invaded by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The sentiments I hear expressed by many of my age group make me wonder why they are so scared of living in a free country. They are more afraid of freedom than they are of intellectual imprisonment through fear.

The attack on our home was not just another door-burning. Glass is not a flammable material, yet five tyres packed with bottles of petrol were stacked against a glass door at the back of the house. The plan was obvious: that the glass would shatter within seconds under the onslaught of such great heat, allowing the petrol and the flames to spread immediately into the carpeted, soft-furnished space behind, causing a giant conflagration with maximum damage and even death. The people who did this – and I use the plural advisedly because one or two men alone cannot carry five tyres and abundant supplies of fuel over rough ground and terraced fields – were following the methods that their fellow Nazis use in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg and Milan: the torching of buildings in the dead of night, with families asleep inside them. In this case, they made one serious miscalculation in their meticulously planned exercise. The door they thought was a sheet of plain glass in a simple wooden frame, when they observed it from a distance on their reconnaissance exercises in the valley, was nothing of the sort. It kept the flames out while we fought the fire, withstanding even the heat from five burning tyres, and the insulation around it kept the petrol from leaking in.

The correct approach to fascism and Nazism, by decent citizens and the people who run this country, is not to ignore it. Ignoring it, treating it as a joke, hoping that it will go away, are all non-tactics that have allowed it to grow. Few seem alert to the fact that, by its very nature, Nazism is rooted in group thinking and the destruction of the individual’s independent identity. That is why Nazis hate people like me so much: we champion civil liberties and celebrate the individual. We are the very opposite of everything they stand for.

One Nazi alone can’t do much. Many Nazis organised into a group can plan systematic violence, and execute it. It took a great deal of planning and teamwork to try to set our house on fire. This teamwork even extended to spreading a layer of smashed glass and petrol across the road, so that anyone coming to our assistance would have an accident (they didn’t).

It is not immigration that threatens our culture now. It is the numbers of Maltese who are embracing fascism and Nazism, and those others who have buried their heads in the sand and let it happen. Three weeks ago, a man wrote to a newspaper (and the letter was published) to suggest that instead of burning the property of the Jesuits, the arsonists should burn the property of newspaper writers who argue against racism. It appears to have been an appealing idea. Two weeks later, the door to Saviour Balzan’s home was set alight. Ten days after that, my home was targeted. There will be others. Nobody wrote in to protest against that misguided man’s letter. He thought he was defending the church by directing arsonists away from priests and towards journalists. Instead, one woman, who comes from a respectable background and should know much better, wrote in to second him, saying that “he has a point” (ah, fatuous phrase!). She quoted the Bible to support him. I wonder how these two Christians are feeling now. The mistake these poor fools make is to believe that the Jesuits and journalists are on opposite sides of the fence. We are not. The Jesuits, their lawyer, myself, Saviour Balzan and other journalists who have yet to be attacked are in the same camp. Our property has been burned because we have stood up to those who advocate fascism, Nazism and racial hatred. I am not a Jesuit and the Jesuits are not columnists, but in this, we are as one.

Perhaps my fellow Maltese will one day realise that it is far better to live freely in a country where there are many immigrants, than to live intimidated by fear, by violent Nazis who attack in the dead of night, in a country where there are no immigrants. We should prize, above all, the freedom we have worked so hard to earn – but not the freedom of those who threaten it. Those who commit criminal acts, and those who incite them to their commission, belong in the public stocks and in jail. Those who go along, “for a laugh”, to the barbecues, moonlight picnics and dinner gatherings organised by the Nazis should ask themselves what in heaven’s name might be so funny now. These people pose a real threat to our culture – and it’s not the immigrants I am talking about. It’s Maltese Nazis.