How to make a Maltese Fascist cross…

And when the only thing to spark any form of interest or enthusiasm is a sudden flicker of a long-forgotten flirtation with Fascism... and Fascism of the most retarded kind, too, based on historical illiteracy and a subliminal desire to be ruled by a police state... well, that's normally the moment when the air raid sirens start wailing in the distance.

Before proceeding, a word about the definitions used in this article. By 'Fascism', I actually refer to the thing itself, exactly as it was manifest in the distant 1930s (hence the capital 'F'). Blackshirts. The Balilla. Cries of 'Duce, Duce!' (or 'Viva la Patria', echoes of which still reverberate online to this day).

It is not a reference to any of a number of recent organisations or websites which actually owe more to football hooliganism than to any discernible political ideology... but rather to an underpinning ideology that once, not long ago, seduced entire generations and precipitated a major world war. 

Like it or not, this variety of Fascism (always with the capital 'F') was as much as formative influence on my grandparents' generation as Eileen Montesin and Riley's Potato Crisps were on the Malta of my own childhood.

As for 'mojo'... well, that's a reference to the ineffable quality that makes things 'interesting' as opposed to 'boring' (I admit it's a stretch from the definition supplied by Austin Powers, but hey! My article, my definitions. Groovy baby, yeah...)

In any case: Malta has now clearly lost its mojo, and like Little Bo Peep just doesn't know where to even start looking. I won't comment about the culture/music scene for now - even if it is intrinsically tied in with the same basic phenomenon - and instead will limit myself only to what passes for mainstream politics in 2013. I mean, just look at it, will you? It doesn't even add up any more.

For instance: when you hear things like the Opposition leader casually informing a crowd of Nationalists on the Fosos that the PN 'needs a vision'... when it is part of his own job description as party leader to supply that selfsame vision he himself admits is obviously lacking... I mean, honestly, I just don't know what to think. What does one actually say to that, I wonder? Gee thanks, Simon, so you've casually informed us (and everyone else) that you don't actually have a plan, you have no clear idea what direction you want to take this party in... and let me guess: you'll be asking us all to vote for you in five years' time, right?

But then, of course, you look across the Rubicon, and it's not exactly a never-ending stream of brainwaves and electrical sparks, either. Last I took a peek, there was Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi holding up his hands with this look of angelic innocence on his face (exactly like a footballer who'd just brought down an opponent in the penalty area), saying something like: oh, I had nothing whatsoever to do with my wife's appointment as Malta's special envoy to the Far East. In fact, I didn't even know about it until yesterday...

What, and you find that hard to believe? O ye of little faith. It's the most plausible thing I've heard since a radio ad tried to sell me a product (made in America, as I recall) which would cure cancer, reverse hair loss, whiten teeth, add a few inches to my manhood, and at a stretch maybe even wash the dishes and take the dog for a walk.

And those are just two examples of a phenomenon that is now all-pervasive in this country. It's called 'cluelessness', and it is manifest everywhere you look.

And yet, we are undeniably living in interesting times. Drift beyond the confines of the mainstream, suddenly you'll find a whole different reality staring us all in the face. Suddenly there are issues - real issues, affecting people's lives - being heatedly discussed in bars and on buses. And in part because the mainstream parties simply won't touch these issues at all - or when they do, it's just to make loud noises which don't actually translate into any tangible results - the political reality surrounding such matters as 'immigration' continues to evolve at an impressive pace... producing one wacky phenomenon after another, in what is increasingly coming to resemble a 19th century freak show.

The latest in this parade of aberrations is the resurgence - yet again, like a recurring bout of malaria - of the same old tired suggestion to 'remove the George Cross from the national flag'.

This argument has been in circulation as long as I can remember: there were letters about it in The Sunday Times, way back when that was the only English language paper to speak of in this country. I am told the same argument was made long before, too.

This time, however, it has been repackaged in what is quite possibly the single most absurd and illogical wrapping I have ever seen: an act of ideological contortionism so bizarre, that it makes Busuttil's public declaration of "I am clueless" almost sound like an exceedingly intelligent thing to say.

The argument now goes roughly like this: we should remove the George Cross because it is a symbol of foreign oppression... and instead replace it with the 'Maltese cross', (i.e., the eight-pointed cross which was actually the symbol of the 'Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalam'), because this is - and I quote - a symbol of "Malta's struggle against foreign occupation".

Hm. OK, where to begin? Let's start with the obvious rejoinder: sorry, folks, you've got it all the wrong way round. The George Cross was awarded to the people of Malta for gallantry in resisting a siege by Axis forces in World War II. I call that a struggle against foreign occupation myself. Unless of course you subscribe to the view - and this is where this entire argument is ultimately heading  - that the Maltese people really are part of an Aryan master race whose rightful place was all along at the right hand of Adolf Hitler; and that if we had the living faeces bombed out of us at all, it was only because our benevolent Nazi cousins from the north were gently trying to remind us that we are really a distant branch of the same uber-family.

So much for the George Cross. The eight-pointed cross, on the other hand, was never awarded to the people of Malta at all, and it was only thanks to a highly unlikely historical vicissitude that it ever even got here in the first place. The reason was primarily because the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem were expelled from their former base on Rhodes by Suleiman the Magnificent in the early 16th century: resulting a sizeable fleet carrying some of the best-trained and most feared fighting men of their age meandering aimlessly around the Mediterranean without a port to call home.

Considering that the Knights of St John of Jerusalem had for centuries made a living directly out of (shiver me timbers) PIRACY - or il corso, as it was rather glamorously known - this fact alone was enough to strike terror into all Mediterranean coastal towns (Christian or Muslim, it didn't matter where money was involved).

The equivalent today would be the American Sixth fleet somehow stuck in the Med, having 'lost' access to the United States. I think we'd all agree that this would constitute a clear and present danger: that sooner or later, these sailors would tire of being stranded out at sea, and would avail of their weapons and military training to simply seize a territory of their own.

It was in part to preempt this very problem - and indirectly also to bolster his kingdom's southernmost defences, even if this came at a cost - that King Charles I of Spain consented to allow the Knights the use of Malta in exchange for a nominal tithe.

Okay, I admit this is gross simplification, and no doubt armies of historians will move to correct all the inaccuracies. Nonetheless the basics are there: the eight-pointed cross was the intellectual property of an order of monastic warriors from different parts of Europe, who ruled this island with an iron fist for just under 300 years... and I need hardly add that the welfare of the Maltese people was not uppermost on their minds when they wielded practically limitless power over our ancestors.

Exactly how any of this qualifies the eight-pointed cross as a 'symbol of Malta's resistance against the foreign oppressor' is a question that only the geniuses behind this campaign can answer. The very opposite is true: the eight-pointed cross is a symbol of a time when the Maltese may as well not even have existed at all; when all decisions concerning these islands were taken by foreigners, with scant regard for the indigenous population. Nor were the Knights who emblazoned the same cross on their own insignias particularly benevolent when it came to lording over this island and its people. I don't begrudge them their mistreatment of the Maltese - it was a different age, and the very idea that this island might one day be an independent 'country' (even the concept of 'a country' was alien, in an age of kingdoms and empires) would have quite frankly been laughed out of the Auberge.

But while I'll forgive the Knights for treating us so shabbily up to 200 years ago - at one point banning Maltese from even entering what would one day be their own capital city - I sort of draw a line at embellishing our national flag with a symbol of a foreign club which denied us membership, and which generally treated us little better than chattel to be bought and sold in their dealings with the superpowers of their age.

But this is just an aside, really. Stripped of all the pseudo-intellectual nonsense, the real reasons people want the George Cross off the flag is that the spectre of Fascism has never really departed, so many decades after it was a very real political force in this country.

The George Cross is hated by some to this day, because it is a symbol of the Allied forces which successfully fought off the horrors of Nazism 70 years ago. It is regarded with bitter resentment, because a chunk of Malta's population secretly (and in some cases openly) wanted nothing more than to see Hitler emerge victorious; for Malta to become part of Mussolini's empire alongside Libya and Abyssinia, and for entire populations to be wiped out to create more lebensraum for a bunch of megalomaniac thugs.

Sadly, this is now what the eight-pointed cross has come to represent in the minds of these people: by a subtle act of historical revisionism, it has risen to become an 'acceptable' replacement for the Nazi Swastika.

And we want it on our flag? I think I'd much rather stick with the dragonslayer myself, thank you very much.