Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1082991
24 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 FEBRUARY 2019 OPINION Raphael Vassallo The Devil came down to Bormla... GOD, when will I ever learn to keep my big mouth shut? This, for instance, is some- thing I wrote just three weeks ago: "There hasn't been a good old-fashioned 'Satanizmu' scare in quite a while now. Yet it feels like only yesterday when parents of schoolchil- dren were routinely warned about the 'Satanic influence' of anything from Heavy Metal, to Harry Potter, to Yoga, to Marvel Comics, to Barney the Purple Dinosaur…" Well, the ink had hardly even dried on the page, when… not one, but two 'good old- fashioned Satanizmu scares' suddenly just materialised in a flash of fire and brimstone… as though my very words had nudged Satan out of his self- imposed retirement, and got him to start paying attention to this little rock of ours again (like he used to so often in the old days.) The first incident involved an unnamed 18-year-old man from Cospicua who alleg- edly (the case is in court as we speak) exploited an older woman's belief in the Occult to cajole her, her daughter, and at least one other woman to "perform sexual acts against their will, [and] violent inde- cent assault on a person who was unable to resist." The same man is also charged with "holding the women against their will and forcing them to perform acts contrary to their decency, slightly injuring them." In court, the prosecution maintained that the victim's belief in Satanism had exposed her to 'control' by the 18-year- old man. "[…] the mother has a hobby of practising the occult. The control would happen because the accused would play on her supersti- tions by saying that she had opened the door to the devil. He took advantage of her. He would use a particular voice. This was all done to satisfy the man's sexual fantasies…" So much for case number one (I'll come back to it in a sec). The second, much more publicised case involved MP Edwin Vassallo's decision to share a news item about how a group of Satanists were injecting bananas with HIV- infected blood, in order to transmit the potentially life- threatening disease and cause a worldwide AIDS epidemic. Hmmm. Now, I'm no authority on Satanism, or anything… but no prizes for guessing which of those two stories I find the more disturbing (with or without any belief in the Occult). Is it the story about an affable (though, let's face it, slightly daffy) politician who fails to spot the difference between fact and fiction… and gets mildly lampooned as a result? Or is it the other story, which so graphically illustrates the precise (and very real) dan- gers of this kind of supersti- tion in the first place? A story which involves abduction, rape, and the power to force others to commit crimes against their will... No two ways about it. The Edwin Vassallo interlude was, at best, a little comic relief in an otherwise drab and dreary political landscape. The Cospicua incident, on the other hand, is a Dario Argento horror film just cry- ing out to be made. It con- tains all the key ingredients of pure terror: for even if you reject the occult inferences out of hand… even if, like me, you believe in 'The Devil' about as much as you believe in Father Christmas, or the tooth fairy… what remains is still pretty horrific by any standard. We are still look- ing at crimes which were real enough to end up in court. Even I, sceptic that I am, will freely confess to finding that kind of story truly frighten- ing. Satan doesn't even have to come into it at all: as this case clearly indicates (sub- ject to all the usual 'innocent until proven guilty' provisos, naturally) there is a level at which devils and demons don't have to actually exist, in order to wield real power over people. Mere belief in their existence – in and of itself – is enough. Everything else is taken care of by human (as opposed to demonic) agency. In other words, we are talking about real crimes committed by real people, on the basis of belief – real or feigned – in the supernatural. How freaking scary is that? Yet just look at how those two cases have been portrayed in the media… and espe- cially on the social media. OK, I can more or less understand the disproportionate attention given to Edwin Vassallo, be- cause his gaffe was also clearly offensive to real sufferers of HIV/AIDS, and contributed to a global culture of ignorance and misinformation about that particular disease. Besides, Vassallo is a sea- soned PN politician, and – like it or not – he actually does represent a sizeable chunk of grassroots support for that party… and not just that party (Labour has its own equivalent mindset, both within the party and among its supporters). So yes: it is not just imaginary devils that can wield unwhole- some influence over others. Politicians influence people, too. So, when supposedly serious politicians, militat- ing within supposedly seri- ous parties, start acting and sounding like 19th century vampire hunters… people are fully within their rights to be alarmed. It is, in fact, a serious political problem in this coun- try: probably far more serious than most would admit. But by the same token, I would expect the other case to be accorded the same social media treatment… even for To put it another way: if the Devil really did exist… which initiative would he consider more worthwhile? Precipitating a global catastrophe costing millions of lives… or indulging in a little sneaky voyeurism in Cospicua?