Live long enough and you’ll see the most unusual pairings in the world. Chocolate and zucchini, white wine and peanut butter jelly sandwiches, champagne and corn dogs. Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis, Al Pacino and Adam Sandler.
And, now, Godfrey Leone Ganado and Tony Zarb, brothers in charms if not in arms. In the anniversary year of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), we have a memorably odd couple to populate a new fashionable circle of hell.
Accusations of hate speech are what link the former managing partner of Price Waterhouse to the former trade union leader. Leone Ganado, now a social activist and vociferous government critic, was incensed by how the PBS journalist, Norma Saliba conducted an interview with Bernard Grech. He posted a rant calling her a ‘political prostitute’ while targeting her appearance. Zarb had notoriously called women protesting outside Castille, after Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, “whores”.
There are some differences. Leone Ganado has apologised unreservedly. Zarb had qualified his apology by extending it only to the “genuine women” among the Castille crowd. No one accused him of transphobia because they supposed this was Zarb-speak for women protesting out of conviction; but neither did anyone bat an eyelid at the implication that it’s all right for a government adviser to call political operatives “whores”.
In punishing the two equally, Dante would have settled for chaining their names together for eternity. Not so in Malta. Zarb was condemned, though got away with keeping his job. But the Institute of Maltese Journalists (IĠM) wants Leone Ganado investigated by the authorities for hate speech.
My point is not about hypocrisy. Nor, to be clear, is it to defend Leone Ganado. It’s to defend our institutions, not least those which should be investigating real hate speech against journalists, especially women: a real, physically threatening scourge of our time.
To repeat something I’ve said before: Zarb was not guilty of hate speech. Neither is Leone Ganado. It was right to call them out. They were both idiots – misogynistic, crass and offensive. That should have been enough to lose Zarb his job. It was enough to make any organisation of which Leone Ganado is a member to dissociate itself from his comments (if not him). But it wasn’t enough to qualify as hate speech.
It’s precisely because real hate speech is ubiquitous in an age of social media and because it’s increasingly tied to violence in the offline world that we need to get it right. Prosecuting or investigating the wrong people is a misuse of resources. Lack of clarity about the standard will only benefit the real hatemongers.
Definitions of hate speech vary but they’re all anchored in Cesare Pavese’s maxim: “Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else’s body.”
Hate speech tends towards Us vs Them polarisation, grounded in skin colour, gender or creed (especially when creed manifests itself in physical appearance). Hate speech also tends to incite others – what’s said is aimed at urging others to act, often unlawfully.
Hate speech, therefore, tends to come with threats, implied or explicit. The online world is awash in such threats. Of the 19 female UK MPs who stood down at the 2019 election, several cited abuse, mainly online, and linked to threats of violence, as the reason for leaving.
Over the last five years, several international studies have concluded that women journalists were quitting the profession or withdrawing from the frontline because of the online abuse they were receiving.
There is also a tendency for hate speech to radiate to envelop members of a journalist’s family, or her sources, if not also her audience- Ranier Fsadni
In 2017, the year Caruana Galizia was killed, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that, in at least 40 per cent of cases, murdered journalists had received threats, including online, before they were killed.
In November, a global survey indicated that online attacks on female journalists were increasingly linked to offline abuse, harassment and attacks.
The IĠM has every reason to be concerned about online abuse of women journalists. Wasn’t Leone Ganado abusive? Yes, but contemptuous abuse can be either offensive speech protected by law (even if repugnant to polite society) or hate speech. How to tell one from the other?
Julie Posetti, writing for the International Centre for Journalists, has identified what is sinister, not just objectionable. First, the abuse must cross from one-off insult to harassment. If the insults become intimate, arriving on a woman’s mobile or social media platforms first and last things in the day, then the case for hate speech is clinched.
Second, it must be networked – to fulfil the criterion of incitement. If there is evidence that what Zarb or Leone Ganado said is linked to organised online mobs – which seed hate campaigns before pushing it mainstream – then I’d be the first to reverse my judgement and accuse them of hate speech.
There is also a tendency for hate speech to radiate to envelop members of a journalist’s family, or her sources, if not also her audience.
Third, hate speech is often linked to violations of a journalist’s or activist’s digital privacy – the publication of her address or telephone number, say – which leads to an increase of threats of physical attacks.
Once you see these criteria, you realise two things.
First, that the case of Caruana Galizia having been a victim of hate speech is unanswerable. Not only was she harassed, her family was (and still is) targeted, with campaigns first seeded, then pushed mainstream.
Second, if there is a danger of hate speech against journalists in Malta, we should be looking at organised online armies linked to the state or the political parties. That’s what Posetti herself says is increasingly the case worldwide. Now that’s worth investigating by the Maltese authorities.