Monday, 14th September 2009
Carmelo Borg Pisani: Nothing romantic about him!
Some people have stated that having a wine named after the Maltese Fascist Carmelo Borg Pisani is a trivial matter. It is not!
I have always been astonished at efforts by certain people in Malta who try to romanticize the historical figure of Carmelo Borg Pisani. The one inescapable fact about Borg Pisani is that he was a convinced Fascist and everybody knows what Fascism stands for.
So all efforts to paint a rosy picture of Borg Pisani as a young misguided idealist, a Maltese irredentist, are beside the point. The main point to keep in mind is that he wholeheartedly believed in the condemnable Fascist ideology.
Also beside the most crucial point of his being a Fascist but intellectually stimulating and worth debating are arguments about whether Carmelo Borg Pisani was a "traitor" or not.
First of all, how does one define a "traitor" in a colonial context? Borg Pisani did not recognize Great Britain's right to possess the Maltese Islands. He did not consider himself a British subject and he had opted for Italian citizenship. Can he, therefore, be considered as having "betrayed" the British colonial masters? If the answer is "yes", this begs the question : "what right had the British to be in possession of the Maltese Islands in the first place?" given that today we interpret history in a post-colonial context.
Did Borg Pisani "betray" his fellow Maltese?
This is rather tricky to answer because an objective answer depends on how you interpret Malta's contribution in the Second World War. Malta was British territory at the time and Great Britain was at war with Italy, Germany and Japan.
However, this was not just a war between countries, it was also a war between democracy and totalitarianism.
The Maltese, except for a totally negligible number of local Fascists, were all for sustaining the war effort in favour of the democratic countries.
How many Maltese wanted a Fascist Malta? A very small number of "intellectuals" at best!
Yet, Borg Pisani was one of those who worked towards placing all the Maltese nation under the Fascist yoke.
Remember that even the Italians themselves eventually saw the error of their ways and rose up in revolt against Fascism. Yet here we had a Maltese who would have subjected his fellow countrymen to the abominations of Fascism in their own country!
For me, yes, when everything is considered you cannot escape from the fact that Carmelo Borg Pisani did betray his fellow Maltese, after all.
Having said all this, I still think that his fate was a cruel one. I am all-out against the death penalty and the right of the British colonial masters to hang a Maltese on his home soil remains highly questionable although acceptable to some who also argue that Borg Pisani was a spy and spies are executed in wartime.
Given today's more humane views on this subject, I would say that Borg Pisani deserved to be sentenced to a long period of imprisonment.
To conclude, commemorating anyone or anything associated with Fascism is wrong. It is an insult to the many victims of this condemnable ideology. So let us stop trying to romanticize the Maltese Fascist Carmelo Borg Pisani.
There was nothing romantic about a person who joined the Fascist Party and actually fought in favour of the Fascist ideology when he could easily have avoided doing so.
RSS
Comments
Another difference between socialism and communism is centred on who controls the structure of economy. Where socialism generally aims to have as many people as possible influence how the economy works, communism seeks to limit that to the state.
Communism and Socialism are as identical as the Jehovah’s Witnesses are similar to the Roman Catholics.
Stalin was communist dictator not a Socialist one.
Example: Tito was a socialist and he could not allow any Stalinist communist ideas to enter into his Yugoslavia, so much so that Yugoslavia was kicked out from the Communist stranglehold of East Europe.
CBP was rightly hanged as the British saw him as an Italian spy which I think was better for him if he was left under the Maltese hands of those years!
Mr Attard so according to you Hitler was mild compared to Stalin? Well! Well!
Just look what your apprentice Hitler did between 1939 to 1945? HE completely changed the course of History. Still an apprentice? With his 'apprenticeship' he made Stalin grasp more communist power in Eastern Europe.
Check on the who's who list of men whoc chnaged the course of history, I'm sure that Hitler is in the top three positions. Such an acheivement from an 'apprentice'!
@ A. Attard
I did not insult you, daft is your notion. You are OK but if you felt insulted I apologise.
Stalin like Hitler and Mussolini was a dictator who abused and manipulated the system. The Catholic Church had tyrants for Popes but that doesn’t mean that the church is a tyrant. Like any other ism, Socialism has got its extreme and moderate angle and the USSR chose the extreme. Nationalism is gallant and virtuous but when taken to extreme it also becomes rude and dictatorial.
The alternations of left and right is what made Western Europe what it is today and I feel quite tranquil living the life of a European Socialist in free Europe.
Why do you keep insulting those who do not agree with you? daft?
You proved that you do not know what is socialism or else you would know that all the other isms pale out next to it.
As regards to the soviet union, Hitler was an apprentist compared to Stalin. ( and I will not even start about Pol Pot)
Socialism is all about class hatred and denying individuals the right to reach the maximum they could acheive.
Did I prove your point? Then I must have slipped miserably as I tried to rebut your daft notion or maybe I misunderstood your first or second suggestion.
We did not get involved in WWII because we were a Crown Colony; we had to get involved because of our strategic importance for the Allies as well as for the Axis Forces. Unlike Spain and Morocco Malta offered no advantage for any side to leave our fathers enjoy the benefits of a neutral state. Had Malta been neutral prior to the war, Benito Mussolini would have ordered an invasion on 10 June 1940 at 1801.
The axis although they were powerful in the central Mediterranean never managed complete control. And it was thanks to the allies for the situation to get worse for Hitler and Mussolini after they (the axis) failed to take Malta. Malta and the rest of the free world were the beneficiaries and not just Great Britain.
As to your question whether a campaign to Integrate Malta with Britain was an act of treason, in all honesty and with all due respect I think that was a silly question and I wonder what you were thinking.
If you ask me,
Treason consist in levying war against your_own country, or in adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
Britain was never an enemy to us and to consider a proposal for Integration as an act of treason would be the stupidest of notions.
Nerik Mizzi campaigned to unite Malta with Italy and maybe even Mintoff momentarily toyed with the same idea but that had absolutely nothing to do with acting against the interest and the security of the Maltese People. Integration, Independence or any major constitutional change calls for a plebiscite and the will of the people is sovereign.
Nerik Mizzi and his acolytes were not ‘interned’ because of their Political belief, they were sent to Uganda because they had, allegedly, sided with the enemy during the time of war. Now whether the accusations where true or false is a different debate.
Borg-Pisani swore allegiance and joined the Army of the enemy. He clandestinely invaded his fatherland with the sole intention of putting the lives of his fellow country folk in imminent danger. Now that is high treason, punishable by death even by the most democratic countries in the world.
there was a person who wanted us integrated with the british instead of indipendent, is he a traitor? does he deserve the gallows / exile ?
You just proved my point
Just what are you talking about? The USSR was the ‘Allies’ greatest partner and without its contribution in the war effort Hitler and Mussolini would have walked triumphantly over Europe. Are you by any chance comparing the scourge of Fascist and Nazism with Socialism? If you are I feel sorry for you.
I am a Socialist and a proud one for that, are you putting me in the same category of the Carmelo Borg Pisanis?
Prompted by the love for my country and my Socialist belief I fought, together with my fellow countrymen, for Malta to gain Independence. The wartime Maltese Fascists betrayed our Fatherland, sided with the enemy and worked to see Malta getting colonialised by the then Fascist Italy- and they got what they deserved, the gallows and exile.
“Malta non è inglese che per usurpazione ed io non sono suddito britannico che per effetto di questa usurpazione. La mia vera Patria è l’Italia. È dunque per lei che devo combattere”
(Malta is not British but for usurpation and I am not a British subject were it not because of this usurpation. My real fatherland is Italy. And so it is for it that I must fight.)
Nothing is Romantic about War and the fascist Mussolini manged to stop it twice and was held as a Wrorld Hero, by no less than Churchill, Ghandi and indeed Roosevelt. At that time , when these three people are recorded to honour Mussolini, why does one find it so strange to accept that others agreed with them and Carmelo Pisani did so - except he was no politican and kept his loyalty , which was abused by the fascists and the Brits now even the maltese.
The fact is that times changed and its teh winner that writes the history after a war!