Amathia – the less I know the better

“The less I know the better”, Joseph Muscat allegedly told his bodyguard, Kenneth Camilleri.  Camilleri went to Muscat to share his concern that Keith Schembri was involved in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder.  But Muscat didn’t want to know.  He chose willful ignorance. And that, according to Aristotle, is the worst thing that can befall any society.

The ancient Greeks had a word for it – Amathia.  It’s when somebody celebrates the fact that they don’t know and take no steps to resolve their ignorance.  For Aristotle and his contemporaries, knowledge was associated with morality.  The more you knew, the better you became.  And for them, Amathia, the refusal to know, was the greatest curse.

Muscat didn’t want to know what Camilleri suspected because Muscat already knew too much. That’s why he frantically googled how to wipe his phone clean and then did so before his house was searched.  That’s why he’s still refusing to give police access to his phone. The security services and the police were briefing Muscat. He knew Yorgen Fenech was a suspect. He knew about 17-Black. Yet he feigned amnesia when asked when he’d last met Yorgen Fenech.  He concealed the fact that Fenech was at his birthday bash in Girgenti. He concealed the fact that he shared a WhatsApp chat group with Fenech and Keith Schembri. He never disclosed that he travelled with Yorgen Fenech to Florence.

Muscat didn’t want to know, and he didn’t want anybody else to know. He led his entire movement into refusing to know.  His entire cabinet didn’t want to know what Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi were up to.  They didn’t want to know what secret financial structures Nexia BT was setting up for them and for that third “too important” person for whom Egrant was waiting. They didn’t want to know about the rotten Vitals deal or the subsequent messy Steward fudge.  They didn’t want to hear about Pilatus. Nor did they want to know about what was happening with the Mozura wind farm.  Muscat’s cabinet didn’t want to know what Lawrence Cutajar, Silvio Valletta, Ian Abdilla, Mario Tonna and Ray Aquilina were doing at the helm of the police force. Abela’s cabinet still doesn’t want to know.

Muscat’s Labour was indoctrinated into not knowing and refusing to know.  They were encouraged to embrace that inverse elitism where those who did know were mocked, ridiculed, persecuted, and finally liquidated. Daphne Caruana Galizia knew. She knew very well what Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri were up to. She knew the machinations behind the Vitals deal.  She was rapidly discovering the filth behind Electrogas.  She knew about 17-Black and that Chris Cardona was up to no good.  She revealed most of it – and would have certainly revealed far more.  She was the antithesis of Amathia and therefore became Labour’s nemesis.  Labour knew that even amongst its ranks, there were those who avidly read her posts. Cardona was right to worry that “she is going to wreck the party”.

Muscat’s cabinet didn’t want to know about the sheer wickedness unfolding from Castille.  In robotic conformity, they spewed the same dumb excuses and hollow justifications fed to them by their leader. That conformity is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw from his prison cell in 1943.  He saw people he grew up with, people who went to the same school, but who became part of a ruthless regime that oozed wickedness.

Muscat’s ministers surrendered their own ability to think, conformed to the “where’s the laptop” groupthink. Muscat created a movement where truth had no value and loyalty mattered above all else. Anybody presenting evidence to contradict Muscat’s many lies – Vitals will transform the health service, Pilatus is a clean bank, the American University of Malta will attract 4000 students, Konrad Mizzi was just thinking of his family, Keith Schembri is just a great businessman – was considered an enemy not only of the party, but a national traitor.

The indoctrinated Labour masses, drip-fed ONE propaganda daily, can hardly be blamed for not wanting to know.  But those who sat at the cabinet table had a duty to know and to act. And they failed that duty, abysmally.

What’s even more shocking is that many of Muscat’s ministers and close allies are now Abela’s ministers. Ian Borg, Owen Bonnici, Michael Falzon, Anton Refalo, Silvio Schembri, Julia Farrugia Portelli, Clint Camilleri, Byron Camilleri, Clifton Grima, Chris Fearne, Glenn Bedingfield, Rosianne Cutajar, Deo Debattista all coldly looked away, betrayed the national interest, refused to know, and denied the facts. And they’re still there – still refusing to know, still pretending nothing happened. The man who gave Muscat legal advice during that dark period is now leading the country and still protecting his former boss.

The Nazi regime had Albert Speer, who embodied that willful ignorance.  He was Hitler’s highly intelligent architect and later Minister of Munitions and production.  At the Nuremberg trials, he claimed he didn’t know anything about the mass murder of Jews, gypsies and political adversaries. He knew nothing about the evil around him. The tribunal didn’t believe him. Nobody did.  Somebody with his intelligence couldn’t not know what was going on. Speer paid the price for his willful ignorance –  twenty years’ imprisonment.

Later Speer claimed that “I was educated not to think”. That same willful ignorance walked the corridors of power in Muscat’s Malta. Sadly, it still does in Robert Abela’s. Those who were duty-bound to take courageous action instead chose cowardly blind loyalty. They chose to support Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Joseph Muscat. Schembri is still “helping” Robert Abela, who feted Muscat like a hero even after he was forced out – hugging him on stage. Abela is still rewarding and protecting Muscat to this day.

Albert Speer’s false claims of ignorance didn’t save him. Muscat’s ministers cannot claim ignorance either to justify propping up Muscat and his two loyal lieutenants for so long. Neither can his consultant Robert Abela. Of them all, he had the greatest responsibility as Muscat’s legal advisor to point Muscat in the right direction.  He didn’t. Still doesn’t.

Muscat was the puppet master. He bears the bulk of the blame for the hubris he created. But Muscat was only possible because the spineless sycophants in his cabinet propped him up to benefit personally from that allegiance. They are equally culpable.  And many of them are still there, still protecting him, still propping him up.  And leading them is the man with the heaviest responsibility – Robert Abela.