Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1245222
7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 MAY 2020 OPINION THE diatribe against Roberta Metsola posted on Facebook by Mario Philip Azzopardi has provoked reactions from many on both sides of the political di- vide. Let me first declare that my opinion of Roberta Metsola is the exact antithesis of Azzo- pardi's and I cannot disagree more with him than on his short-sighted and furious as- sessment of Metsola. But I do not intend to defend or attack either Roberta or Mario in this piece about the fine line between hate speech and insult. Frankly, I am often at a loss in this respect. Take this week's column writ- ten by Dana Millbank in The Washington Post. Millbank is a well-known US columnist who boasts of a BA cum laude in political science from Yale Uni- versity – no amateur, I would say. Well. the first part of his col- umn published last Wednesday said this: "Allow me to share some frank thoughts about the president: The orangutan in the White House is less refined than a savage. He is a fool, an irresolute, vacillating imbecile. He is an idiot, of low intellec- tual capacity. He is a barbarian, a yahoo, a gorilla – the original gorilla – and an unshapely man. He is horrid-looking, a scoun- drel, a creature fit, evidently, for petty treasons. "He is dishonest. He is un- just. He has no principle, no respect for law. In his adminis- trative madness, on his uncon- stitutional crusade, he uses the power of government to crush. His presidency is despotism, a dictatorship, a monstrous usur- pation, a criminal wrong and an act of national suicide. "The American people are in no mood to re-elect a man to the highest office whose dai- ly language is indecent. His speech is coarse, colloquial, devoid of ease and grace, and bristling with outrages against the simplest rules of syntax. His silly remarks are flat and dish- watery utterances. It wouldn't be easy to produce anything more dull and commonplace – awkwardly expressed and slipshod, so loose-jointed, so puerile. Lacking in dignity or patriotism, his words would have caused a Washington to mourn and would have inspired a Jefferson, Madison or Jackson with contempt. "A leader of incapacity and rottenness, he has taken us on a wicked and hazardous exper- iment. He lacks practical talent and capacity for government. He is an old joker. He is weak as water, a man of canting hy- pocrisy. He sickens us. If he is re-elected I shall immediately leave the country." I have only reproduced half his column both because of space limitations and because, anyway, the incredibly strong language somewhat peters off. My point is, in Malta we seem not to have accepted that in- sulting people is a right – part of the right for freedom of ex- pression. After the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, on 7 January 2015, the Maltese press joined the rest of Europe screaming about the sacred right for freedom of expression. Charlie Hebdo was well known for insulting religions – not just Islam, by the way. The Maltese press rose, united in indig- nation, and even adopted the hashtag #jesuischarlie, making it its own. Of course, the au- thors of the heretical cartoons were not Maltese! When Daphne Caruana Gal- izia was assassinated – not be- cause she frequently exercised her right to insult people, but because she was on the right track uncovering a serious case of corruption – all the Maltese press expressed solidarity with her in the spirit of freedom of expression. When Mario Philip Azzopardi published a silly tirade against Roberta Metsola, it was de- scribed as 'hate speech' worthy of being condemned by every- one – to the extent that The Times last Wednesday, editori- ally expressed indignation that the Manoel Theatre "gave no indication that its board would take any action to prevent it from happening again" – as if the Manoel Theatre Board has a right to censor the private thoughts of any author or pro- ducer who uses the facilities of the theatre to stage their plays, plays that are no longer subject to censorship! The fact that Roberta Metso- la is a woman does not make anyone who insults her a mi- sogynist, as the ToM editori- al purported. Roberta was not insulted because of her gender but because of her politics. Saying that everybody 'hates' Metsola when she gets so many first preference votes in the EP election is patently untrue and bordering on the inane. The question remains: Where does insult stop and hate speech begin? The notion of hate speech does not exist without an ex- plicit instigation to 'hate' some- one because of differences in ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender or political differences. But was Azzopardi's silly tirade 'hate speech' or just a clumsy, exaggerated and absolutely un- necessary insult? Is Dana Millbank's post in The Washington Post – coinciden- tally published a few hours be- fore the editorial of The Times – hate speech? In the end, the issue, I sup- pose, is whether the writing under consideration instigates the reader to hate someone. Did Mario Philip Azzopardi in- stigate people to hate Roberta Metsola? Did Dana Millbank instigate his readers to hate Donald Trump? Or were they simply exercis- ing their right to insult as pro- tected by their right for free- dom of expression? Perceptions, perceptions A day or two after a long meeting with the Prime Minis- ter in Castille on Monday night, former PM, Joseph Muscat, was reported to have presented his successor with a nine-page re- port compiled by "the office of Dr Joseph Muscat" mapping the possible evolution of the Mal- tese economy in 2020 and 2021. The Prime Minister's decision to involve his predecessor in the drafting of Malta's post-COV- ID-19 economic recovery plan is, from a political point of view, an unwarranted disaster. Not because Muscat's contri- bution to this issue cannot be economically sensible but be- cause the decision has – in one fell swoop – undermined all of Robert Abela's previous at- tempts to distance himself from his predecessor. The decision sustains the PN line that the change from Mus- cat to Abela was simply a cos- metic change and that nothing has actually changed. We are still in the same creaky boat! Politics is all about percep- tions and Abela has shot him- self in the foot by unwittingly relaying the message that he is, after all, not his own man. That he apparently did not re- alise this would happen, contin- ues to show that Abela has still not yet learnt his ropes. He has not yet realised that messages sent by actions are more powerful than messages sent by words. Michael Falzon The right to insult micfal45@gmail.com