In a follow-up post this morning, Jon Mallia said he found Lowell’s recent increase in popularity “worrying”.

“I agree with him on a lot of things,” Mallia prefaced, making reference to the controversial politician’s views on Malta’s “famine of political integrity, aesthetic mediocrity and the ghettoification of the islands”. But it seems like that’s where the similarities ended, with Mallia then going on to explain how different his views on migration and the vilification of foreigners are.

“I can never accept, just because whoever was in government decided to make his friends richer by filling this country up with migrants without a plan, we’re going to blame it all on whoever was invited to our country, for us to essentially cook him alive,” Mallia wrote.

“This all happened with one plan in mind – to make everyone a ‘sinjur zgħir‘ (a small rich person) in the immediate future,” the podcaster and former rapper continued. “A 10-year plan. Like Muscat always used to talk about. He’ll do 10 years and leave. And now that the 10 years have expired, look at where we are.”

Mallia went on to say it was this plan – and the lack of structure and standards while enforcing it – which has led to the situation Malta is in now… even when it comes to “importing foreigners en masse”.

“And that’s why I want to speak to Lowell,” Mallia said. “Because I think that, for him to have his MEP wish granted, he’s going to create a tribalistic anger in our stomach which will spill the blood of innocent people.”

Within less than an hour since his status, Mallia received dozens of comments… and while some congratulated him on his words, others still were very quick to vocally disagree, echoing many of Lowell’s points from previous speeches.

Just last week, Mallia clarified that Lowell had already been invited onto his very popular podcast twice, but the invitation was refused on both occasions.

76-year-old Norman Lowell – who celebrated his birthday a couple of days ago – is a retired banker and artist-turned-ultranationalist leader who has been in the centre of controversies over the years. In 2019, during a meeting of his party, he had compared the Auschwitz concentration camp to the “Disneyland of Poland”. When asked by Lovin Malta whether he was a Holocaust-denier, Lowell’s answer was short and direct: “How can one deny something that never happened? …This whole hoax is the biggest lie since the Virgin Mary.”

During the 2019 MEP Elections, Imperium Europa emerged as Malta’s strongest third party, with more than 8,000 votes catapulting Lowell over the small parties despite only getting 3% of the total votes. Lowell’s first foray into MEP elections was 15 years prior, back in 2004, when he had received 0.7% of the total votes (precisely 1,603 votes).

During those elections, an additional 0.3% voted for Moviment Patrijotti Maltin (who received 771 votes), an other anti-immigrant party, with another 0.5% still going to ultra-conservative Alleanza Bidla.

Malta definitely isn’t an isolated case here – elsewhere in Europe, a new political trend has seen a small but gradual shift to right-wing ideologies, with Italy, Sweden and Finland all seeing the integration of such parties in the leading or participation of their governments.

What do you make of Jon Mallia’s assessment of Malta’s political climate? Do you agree with his concerns? Sound off in the comments below.