Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/181770
21 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2013 t cross… 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 eightpointed 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 pseudointellectual 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 While I'll forgive the Knights for treating us so shabbily up to 200 years ago, I sort of draw the line at decorating our national flag with a symbol of a foreign club which has denied us membership 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. Opinion