Review by Joseph Anthony Debono

Dr Mark Sammut Sassi is a man of rare erudition. Flying at the fall of Dusk (FaFoD), his latest work, soars high on the wings of multiple disciplines, supported by breathtaking knowledge of Western letters and visual arts. The title itself evokes the owl of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, preparing to take flight at the onset of dusk, a symbol of philosophy reflecting on a phenomenon only on the cusp of its demise. Which is what this book does!  FaFoD is then a liberal education in its own right. To clarify, this is the education advocated by the likes of Thomas Aquinas, not by polychromatically haired academics of today's "woke" institutions. FaFoD is a collection of columns that the author wrote and published in The Malta Independent between January 2018 and May 2020. While disparate essays, they are united by common themes; all concerned with the vicissitudes of Malta under the premiership of Dr Joseph Muscat. The book comes with a critical introduction by its editor, André P. Debattista, and two particularly insightful analyses of Dr Muscat, as well as of his impact on Malta over these tumultuous years. Two indices complete the book, one of movies, the other of publications, both consisting of works on which the author drew for his thoughts such as they appear in these pages. The works listed in these indices are so important that they will impart an outstanding (liberal) education to anyone working through that lot.

FaFoD is a work that burns with emotion, foremost of which is the curiosity of the true intellectual at the sight unfolding before his eyes. How did Malta, so placid a decade ago, and its then lethargic Labour Party, suddenly acquire a pace and direction hitherto unknown? The author brings his formidable intellect and profound learning to enquire on all this, and more. There is also a strong sense of disgust and anger that the author, a man strongly inclined towards Communitarian ideas, feels at the ideological changes that the Labour Party underwent under Muscat's leadership. There are therefore two main themes, both closely interrelated. One deals with the character and actions of Muscat himself. The other deals with the ideological deterioration of the Left in Malta, certainly as a consequence of the absolute hegemony that Muscat and his coterie acquired over the Labour Party.

Logos is an Ancient Greek word central to Western philosophy because it expresses supreme reason, order and principle. The author's analysis shows that Muscat was clever enough to discern emerging trends, and completely amoral in riding those that served his purpose, irrespective of one's coherence with the other. The author, privileged in his once close links with the Labour Party, narrates many stories and vignettes outlining how Muscat, and those around him, used language loosely, ambiguously and deceptively. But their language is not logos, because principle and values have tangible and demonstrable meaning of universal application, not smoke for the deception and betrayal of those that hear them.

It is here that the tone of the book turns to anger, not just at the pillage of the country, but at the  way Labour spurned its old Socialist values, which overlap significantly with the author's Communitarian ones, to embrace Muscat's mirage. The book explores if these values are what might be called "Conservative" in political philosophy. But Conservatives are often conflated with those who dream of an idealised past that never was. The book does not hanker after this. It espouses universal values of employment, housing, education, health and pensions. Moreover, for nobody lives by bread alone, for spiritual, intellectual and aesthetic growth. These are universal values, universal because none but a nihilist would disagree. The book is therefore not advocating conversion to any form of Conservatism, only to real principles as all men in history would have acknowledged except those driven insane by the cognitive pollution of relativism and the hazy rhetoric of those who like Muscat embody nothing more than the lying spirit of this age.

FaFoD is therefore the opus of a man of real principle and values and it analyses the current conundrum of a Left departing faster and faster from its original principles towards an ideology that is increasingly nihilistic and concerned, not with improving the lot of the community, but with sacrificing humanity to some Moloch of its own paraphilia. In this too Muscat has been the zeitgeist of the age. This then is an important book, one that sheds much light on the chasm that has opened on the Left, one that has not only brought destruction to Malta, but perdition to its soul. As a record of all this, and for the erudition with which it deals with these topics, this book deserves to be read by everyone struggling to make sense of how a country that appeared to be healthy and prosperous barely a decade ago has imploded into what might very well be an irrecoverable mess. Like an owl flying over the death of the day.

Flying at the Fall of Dusk is available from all good booksellers.

Joseph Anthony Debono is a historian, classicist and techie with irrepressible curiosity about all manner of things