Last year, Malta had to endure an orgy of violence perpetrated against those who were thought to be helping or promoting the cause of the people held in detention camps – the ones who are known as klandestini. There were several nasty fires, including one at my home – which would have destroyed the building and killed all inside it, had it not been for two fortunate twists of fate. The violence had escalated from the burning of cars and front doors to the attempted murder of a sleeping family at 3am, by placing five large tyres packed with bottles of petrol, and a jerry-can of fuel, behind a glass door at the back of the house, then setting fire to them.

The idea was that the glass would immediately shatter, allowing the petrol and the fire to spread through to the carpets and furnishings just behind it, creating an inferno. Because this was billed as just another act of arson in a long series, and not as the attempted murder of an entire family, most people did not realise how serious it was, or how shockingly dreadful the intended consequences were. The terrorists must have come to their senses after that, because the run of linked acts of arson came to an abrupt halt.

Now Malta is enduring what looks to be the start of another violent campaign. This time it’s not about klandestini, but about birds. We have every reason to believe that this too will escalate until the point that tips the balance. That usually comes with an act so disgusting that public opinion turns decisively against the perpetrators and repudiates their cause. In November 1986, it was the murder of Raymond Caruana that was the tipping-point for a public inured to outrageous violence and to abuses of human rights and of civil liberties. After that, nothing could save the election for the Labour Party.

One can never know what the tipping-point will be when violence is escalating, though murder or attempted murder seems to be it. In the case of last year’s racist-inspired spate of arson, it appears to have been the attempted murder of a sleeping family that tipped the balance. The leading articles of a couple of newspapers had asked at the time whether somebody would have to die in a fire before it all stopped and the public and the police finally woke up to the seriousness of the matter.

The horrid truth is that to the Maltese violence is a way of life. Disputes and disagreements are settled through violent acts or violent words. People are actively or passively aggressive. There is a hatred of others and a sense of feeling hard-done-by which is palpably simmering beneath the surface. Backstabbing is rampant. If this were Haiti, there would be voodoo dolls stuck full of pins in almost every home. The islands are throbbing with grudges, jealousy and bitter resentment.

We acknowledge this, and how dangerous and threatening it is, by our deeply-held belief in tbezzil and the evil eye. That “other people” are potentially dangerous is something we take for granted. That is why we let few people into our homes and regard the idea of friends with suspicion, building our social life around our extended family instead. Our tolerance threshold for public and private violence is very high, which is why we segued so quickly from the normality of the 1960s to the routine violence of the 1970s and the 1980s. It was then that society appears to have decided that it is normal for groups with a grudge to go out and commit acts of violence against persons whom they perceive as threatening to their interests, against their property and in public places that have special significance.

There are obvious parallels between what happened under the Labour government in the 1970s and 1980s, what happened last year in the name of xenophobia and racism, and what is happening now in the name of shooting and trapping. The psychological profile of the perpetrators in all three cases is identical. I would not be surprised to learn that the identity of a few of them is identical also. This is because we are dealing here with people who are not motivated by a cause so much as by violence itself. They choose causes which give them an outlet for their innate aggression. If the anti-abortion movement in Malta were to take the turn it has taken in the USA (a wild hypothesis), with doctors and nurses being attacked and clinics set on fire, then these people would espouse the anti-abortion cause with enthusiasm.

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I believe that it is the anti-social personality that comes first and the cause that comes second. In putting the tag of blame on the cause – the old Labour government, racism, bird-shooting – we are missing the point that what should be of primary concern to us is the anti-social behaviour itself. Even if the bird-shooting matter is sorted out, this kind of violence will erupt again in the name of another cause within a few years.

What we are dealing with here is people with a disordered psychology. They are anti-social, and their violent acts are committed primarily to satisfy their urges rather than to further their cause. This much must be obvious, because no cause is furthered by violence and you don’t win public sympathy in this way. I must make it clear that I am not talking about bird-shooters, racists or Old Labour supporters in general, but about the individuals who have committed these acts of violence. The cause itself is almost irrelevant, though it has to be a cause that allows scope for this kind of anti-social behaviour. I can’t see any letter-bombs killing teenage girls, arson attacks on homes, or destruction of public spaces in the name of Din L-Art Helwa

or the Association for Abandoned Animals.

I am not talking, either, about the people who commit violence when in mass gatherings. There is something called the psychology of the mob (hence mob violence) that can provoke otherwise sane and well-balanced people into acts of aggression that might shock even them the morning after. I draw a clear distinction between the violence perpetrated against journalists during the Valletta march held by the shooters’ lobby, and the violence perpetrated under cover of darkness, carefully planned and executed, that we saw last year and are seeing again now. The psychological profile of the man who commits impulsive violence in a mob and that of the man who carries out a premeditated attack in the secrecy of the night is not the same at all. Both are condemnable, but we should be in no doubt as to which one is truly and seriously threatening.

The people who commit acts of violence under cover of the night, ostensibly because of the cause they favour but really because of their own disordered psychology, are dangerous to society.

To see them for what they really are, we have to take off our blinkers and the labels that we have stuck on them.

We have to study them in isolation from the cause in the name of which they are operating.

The people who lit fires last year, and those who destroyed the nature reserve this year, did not do so because they don’t want black people in Malta, or because they want more leeway to shoot.

Those were just the channels for their underlying personality problems.

They lit fires in cars and homes and poured engine oil into a bird sanctuary because they are anti-social. Without these outlets for their anti-social urges, they will look for others. Removing the cause will not solve the problem of this kind of dreadful violence. It will simply move it along, unless it is these individuals who are themselves removed and put where they belong, with no petrol or engine oil to play with.

The police are dealing with a serious problem here, and they must know it.