The Labour Party risks entering history as “that ‘Pufta’ of a Party” and will become a pillar of salt
Now that the academic year has begun, I had the opportunity to discuss with students Frederick Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morality.” This philosophical work is divided into three parts. In the first section, the German philosopher makes a historical reflection and states that there was only the concept of Good and Bad for the Romans.
The concept of good and evil did not exist for the Romans. This concept was to be found in Hebrew culture. With Christianity, this Jewish concept entered European culture during the Middle Ages. Nietzsche continues writing that during the Renaissance, there was an attempt to bring back the Classical Roman idea of good and bad, and the concept of good and evil was slowly being discarded.
It was a timely consideration because popes, like Alexander V, a Borgia and Julius II, a Rovere, tried to implement it by putting aside the concept of good and evil and returning to the Classical idea of good and bad and for doing so, the secular world to this very day goads them and speak against them. Why did this happen?
This happened because Martin Luther, a German friar, was scandalized by what he witnessed when he visited the Rome of Pope Alexander V. Luther was not shocked by matters he considered bad but was surprised that those who allowed such things because they considered them as no longer morally harmful and therefore were evil for him. These popes thought them wrong but no longer attributed any moral concept to specific sexual and military misbehaviour. Luther considered this behaviour the devil’s work; better still, it was pure evil and could never be described simply as lousy behaviour!
This Renaissance largesse prompted Martin Luther’s reaction to the Protestant Reformation. According to Nietzsche, this reform put back the clock and reaffirmed the concept of good and evil as opposed to the concept of good and bad. This Judeo-Christian tradition reached its epitome during the French Revolution, which, at the end of the day, can be considered another Protestant revolution which occurred during the French Classical Era. Back then, the concept of good and bad had returned the French culture, but the French reformists were against the readoption of this classical precept. Therefore, in the name of the secular state (and no longer in the name of the Church or the Catholic religion), they reaffirmed this concept of evil to those mores that they considered bad.
Today, even in Malta, the Liberals – more than the Catholics – talk about political actions of good and evil and not of good and bad. Today, the concept of sin has become part of the language of both Liberals and Progressives, and this is not the product of the Catholic Church as is thought but the result of the French Revolution. A leaflet published in Gozo confirms all this.
The first casualty of all this is the Labour Party, which pushed forth the concept of sexual diversity. Thus, Chapter 19 in Genesis must be read in this context. Sodomy is represented as evil in the Bible. But it is portrayed as evil because whoever commits it brings about the downfall of the institutions that embraced it and not because of the act itself. Therefore, it is not an act per se that appears evil but what is linked to it: the breaking up of institutions to which they belong.
When one sees what is happening in the Maltese Labour Party, one cannot remember and think about what is written in Genesis and why it was written in that way. No doubt, whoever wrote this Chapter was reflecting on what was happening around him. When people of the same sex take over an institution, this institution ends up collapsing. In Hebrew, men always held leadership; therefore, the language is male talk. While in normal circumstances, sexual orientation does not affect institutions, when there is a conglomeration of people of the same sex in places of power, there comes into action the mechanism of bio-power about which Michel Foucault has written.
This discourse is also valid for heterosexuals. We note this in the Middle Ages, and the Catholic Church legislated on the subject in the Fourth Lateran Council. The Church observed that when couples marry within the same family in consanguinity, the possibility of problems within the family is greater than with families who have not intermarried. After all, it was an atheist who confirmed this principle. I am referring to George Bernard Shaw, who believed that “familiarity brings contempt”.
I can recall Pierre Chaunu saying – in one of his lectures at the Sorbonne – that a ban on marriages between heterosexual couples within the same families was discouraged not because these marriages could lead to various disabled children being born but because it would have created more problems for the families and the community as opposed to other unions where there is not the same blood.
What we are experiencing today is an example of the actuality of these statements in the state of our parties. The Nationalist Party was destroyed by the Liberals who hobnob with the FOIPN – which is a section within the NP for people in same-sex relationships. The same is happening to the Labour Party. The Labour Party finds itself being destroyed from the inside. This is going to harm the gay cause because gays are now at risk of being associated with all the ongoing corruption in our country. This will bring about the downfall of their cause and of the Party that supported their cause. In fact, the manner in which Labour is behaving vis-à-vis those who worked very hard for the Party but have been abandoned by the administration of this Party is leading – to use common jargon that a number of paid members is now saying that their Party is a party of the “puftas”. It should be pointed out that in Maltese, the latter word “puftas” from the English word “puff” is not only used in a derogatory sense towards homosexuals but is also used to refer to whosoever sets aside his colleague even when if his sexual orientation is not homosexual.
As we are reminded, the government is using the term ‘pufta’ in a triumphant manner. Therefore, it is no longer part of hate speech. The problem is that among Labour Party members, there are those who identify themselves as gay. These are no longer isolated cases but have become a conglomerate. Therefore, this type of popular thought will no longer remain metaphorically the synonym for “gayyagni”, but will become a natural expression. This is because gay people involved in managing this political Party ended up in a clique that is discarding the Party’s children after using them to win the elections to accommodate the par venue!
In other words, the Labour Party is going to end up in the public’s memory as well as with its members as “that ‘pufta’ of a party”, and the meaning of ‘pufta’ has been specially enacted by that class that holds the harness of the Labour Party. This is going to come about not as those who used it in Gozo on an official Government poster but in the prophetic context of Chapter 19 in Genesis, where individuals became pillars of salt. The Party will become a politically sterile party, as in the allegory of the book of Genesis.