This column first appeared in Malta Today

When people put a laughing emoji or a derogatory comment every time the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder is mentioned, I take a look at their profile.

Most of the time, they look quite harmless. Your ordinary people next door, if you will; people you might even know. Some even display photos of patron saints and talk about how religious they are. So it makes me wonder what compels them to be so heartless and casually cruel in their reactions and how they can write with such hate on such a very public platform. They themselves see no dichotomy, of course, between the teachings of Christ and their entrenched political beliefs which lead to their online “banter”.

It also doesn’t take a special unit of the cyber police to figure out that they are very diehard Labour supporters, or that the ones who insult them back by using equally derogatory language are diehard Nationalists. 40 years ago, who you voted for was something you kept to yourself, but no one shies away from declaring their political opinion on Facebook any more.

We are never at a loss for controversy in this country and social media just seems to have exacerbated the situation now that the hotheads have been unleashed all over FB. It has become exhausting and toxic every time one logs on, because the viciousness is so visceral it leaps off the screen.

Why do we do this? The conclusion I come to is always the same: it seems that for certain segments of the population, this whole case stopped being about justice being served a long time ago. It is about who will “win” in the political stakes. After generations of brainwashing by political parties, it is tragic that we still cannot agree on issues which (shorn of political allegiance) should be a no brainer. You would think that everyone would be on the same page when it comes to a murder victim, and that whoever was behind the plot to kill Daphne should be behind bars. Leave the admittedly divisive figure of Daphne herself out of it and think about it rationally: let’s say an anonymous Jane Doe had been killed, shouldn’t the culprits who paid for the assassination go to jail, no matter how powerful they are? Doesn’t the fact that there were those in power who mingled so nonchalantly with criminals send shivers down your spine? Shouldn’t it worry every single citizen that there was a possible obstruction of justice?

When people try to mock and belittle those who keep asking glaringly obvious questions about the bizarre verdict, it makes me wonder whether their hatred of the murdered journalist runs so deep that they are perversely glad that those behind it “got away with it.” The legitimate protest on Wednesday was likewise the target of yet another exercise in lashing out with puerile phrases like “oqogħdu hemm ja indannati” (sit there and take it you frustrated lot), “għalhekk qatt ma tirbħu (that’s why you never win an election). The protest attracted a wide spectrum of society and yet for many these demonstrations continue to personify Daphne/PN, a faction which is accused of being out to topple the Labour government by any means possible. Those at home bashing away at their keyboards are the hardcore PL supporters whose main goal in life is to stick up for their party and ward off any attempts to bring it down. My party, über alles.

Somewhere along the line we have lost the ability to wrench ourselves away from the line drawn in the sand of partisan allegiance and start thinking for ourselves. Even those who are openly left-wing and attended the protest to support what is right and denounce what is blatantly wrong in this country have been branded and labelled. You are either PN or PL, you cannot be anything else. I am always reminded of the simple yet powerful phrase first coined by Dom Mintoff which stills ring loud and clear in many people’s ears: ‘Min mhux magħna kontra tagħna” (those who are not with us are against us). Any hope of taking a stand out of sound moral conviction has been completely lost in translation because political blinkers get in the way.

The murder, the trial, the acquittal, the protests – it is always about jeering at those who “lost” while gloating about the fact that “we won”. My football team, my village feast, my political party – underlying them all is the same sense of schadenfreude. The thrill of satisfaction that you have humiliated your rival is the fuel which keeps too many people crowing with triumph…and that mindset is also what keeps propping up those who should be made to pay for how they have disgraced our seat of government and our country.

Meanwhile the new revelations which came out on Thursday afternoon have added another twist in the tale, and by the time this column is published we might know more about why several of the jurors were arrested and questioned. Despite a police statement asking the public and the media to refrain from speculation, it hasn’t stopped anyone from doing just that. This news has launched a fresh onslaught of bickering and verbal abuse which is both wearying and disheartening. Social media has continued to confirm what Xarabank exposed all those years ago – that we are incapable of disagreeing without becoming hostile and antagonistic towards those who don’t agree with us. It has also shown that the loudest, rudest and most obnoxious voices, especially those who have discovered FB reels, get the most attention because they use rage bait to stir the pot.

Whereas pre-social media you might have your own circle of friends and relatives who agree with you, now it’s very easy to congregate through sharing and tagging, until there is a whole slew of people baying for blood, emboldened by the ease with which ugly things can be said online to people who have lost their loved ones in tragic circumstances. Online commentary removes our ability to be humane; we are not staring into the person’s face and feeling their pain when we taunt them or shrug it all off very glibly: “U iva, it’s not the first person who has died.” Should protecting the party you voted for out of blind loyalty come at the expense of human life?

In this tense political climate, we are back to the age-old mantra where one is insulted and accused of always being “kontra l-gvern” simply for pointing out what is patently wrong. We have been here before, because PN supporters pre-2013 used to say exactly the same thing if anyone dared to criticise the Nationalist Government. I should know.

I also don’t see the point of highlighting aggressive comments, “look what this guy told me”, unless it is to gain sympathy and get more traction on your page. Will drawing attention to it make these people change their viewpoint? No. Will it make them nicer? No. Will it make them stop? No. In fact, I think by giving them prominence you are simply fanning the flames even more, which will get us nowhere.

Anyone who writes about politics has been at the receiving end of insults, and as unsettling and disturbing as this can be, unfortunately, it comes with the territory. For too many people, politics is a trigger, they just cannot see clearly and they lose it – I concluded long ago that trying to reason with them is a lost cause. There is a lot to be said for the art of ignoring; we are not obliged to engage with every single comment unless we wake up every morning, grab our phones and are ready to pounce, just spoiling for a fight (which is what it often feels like).

As Malta continues to grapple with the fallout of this notorious trial and verdict, and as we continue to lose sight of what it means to be compassionate human beings, more people need to learn that the only way to extinguish the vitriol is to not give it more oxygen, and to just keep on scrolling.