"Choose those who truly love the country," was the key message Joseph Muscat promoted during a European parliament election campaign. He implied that Roberta Metsola and David Casa hate Malta and their compatriots, simply because they fought to protect Maltese citizens from Labour's abuse. Muscat has gone but his hostile rhetoric remains Labour's battle-cry to this day. Robert Abela picked up the baton from where his predecessor left off.
Last October, Robert Abela accused PN MEPs of intending "to damage Malta internationally and hurt investment" simply for requesting a debate in the European Parliament about rule of law issues in Malta. In parliament Abela insisted that those opposition MEPs had effectively "debated against their own country". His party tabled a parliamentary motion arguing that the Opposition was "ready to damage Malta by continuously and systematically using Europe's institutions". Abela accused the PN of "tarnishing Malta's reputation for political gain".
Labour's mighty propaganda machine amplified Abela's accusations. ONE's headline read "PN MEPs spent a week undermining Malta". Labour's own MEPs regularly resort to similar name-calling. "Nationalist MEPs take every opportunity to damage the country," one of their statements read. Labour claimed that PN MEPs were engaged in a "holy war against Malta in European institutions".
Labour deputy leader and MEP Alex Agius Saliba repeatedly labelled Opposition MEPs' requests for debates at the European parliament as "an attack on Malta's reputation". When Judge Lawrence Mintoff sent a letter exposing how Prime Minister Abela had been communicating with him, both directly and via WhatsApp messages, discussing partisan politics and the appointment of the Chief Justice, PN MEP Peter Agius raised the issue during a meeting at the EU parliament. Agius referred to the claims made by Judge Mintoff in the sworn letter he sent to Cabinet members.
Alex Agius Saliba swiftly barged in with his trademark insolence, accusing his fellow MEP of never losing "any opportunity to raise a local issue at the EU parliamentary level to harm, not the government, but our country". When the Labour deputy leader droned on with unnecessary and irrelevant details, the chairman switched his microphone off, triggering protests from Agius Saliba that "it's not fair".
The Labour Party and its leaders insist that discussing key issues relating to Malta's rule of law at European level constitutes "airing Malta's dirty laundry abroad". Those MEPs raising those issues are held as traitors. They're accused of lacking "love for their country".
Roberta Metsola, David Casa and Peter Agius aren't the first to be accused of lacking love of country and love of their people.
When Hannah Arendt published her reportage on the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, she was fiercely attacked by her fellow Jews. Arendt dedicated just one and a half pages of that 275-page book to criticising those amongst her own people who had collaborated with the Nazis. She was vilified by her own friends who accused her of blaming her own people for the holocaust.
Her good friend Gershom Sholem wrote to her and told her that she had no Ahavath Israel - no love of Israel, no love for her own people.
That's the same accusation Labour levels against David Casa, Roberta Metsola and more recently Peter Agius.
Hannah Arendt didn't protest. She didn't argue with Gershom Sholem, She didn't deny the charge. On the contrary. She replied to Sholem - "you're right. I love my friends, I love my family. I don't love a people".
Arendt was being asked to overlook the factual truth, to close both eyes to the appalling behaviour of some of her own people, she was being asked to stop denouncing what was evidently wrong - simply because it was committed by people of her own race. To do so, Hannah Arendt believed, would be to compromise the most important essence within her being - her honesty and integrity. Even more disturbing for Arendt was the expectation by her own friends that she should deny the factual truth.
Exonerating those amongst her own people for collaborating with the Nazis, simply because they were Jews was unthinkable for her. She was shocked that the accusation that she lacked love for her own nation was being used to coerce her into turning a blind eye to the crimes committed by some of her own people. To her that level of dishonesty was equivalent to the banality of evil that she described in her book.
Arendt believed deeply in the importance of plurality - the ability to expose oneself to as many opinions as possible in order to think critically, to be able to judge, to discern between fact and fiction, truth and deceit. For her, plurality was the anti-thesis of ideology, where a love of the nation or the party requires giving up your own faculties of critical thinking. Closing both eyes to the wrongs committed by those of your own party constitutes the relinquishing of critical thought in exchange for fixed dogma handed down by political leaders.
When Labour brags that "we will always defend Malta" what they really mean is that no matter how criminal the behaviour of our leaders and colleagues, no matter how self-serving and corrupt the actions of our fellow party members, we will always defend them. When Labour accuses Opposition MEPs of "attacking Malta's reputation", they are simply venting their anger at those MEPs for refusing to overlook the damage done to the country by Labour party officials. For Labour "love for your country" means denying the possibility that your own party leadership's behaviour was damaging the country and its people. It means insisting that Labour politicians are always right, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It means insisting that the Vitals-Steward deal benefitted the nation - that we got exactly what we paid for.
Labour's slogans of patriotism, love for Malta and for our people are nothing but an expectation that unpalatable truths are denied, that inconvenient revelations overlooked. Labour accuses Opposition MEPs of treachery simply because they refuse to suspend their conscience and refuse to participate in Labour's strategy of silence in the face of wrongdoing. Lying and deception is not love of country - truth is.