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Matthew Vella
“Any time I am outside, I make sure the police know where I am. It would be the best thing for the movement. I pray to my God that the police pick me up. I am waiting with bated breath. Imagine Norman Lowell being arrested for saying the Maltese should boycott businesses that employ illegal immigrants and refugees.”
Norman Lowell, the face of Imperium Europa, the far-right movement that polled over 1,600 first-preference votes at the European Parliament elections, is elated at the news that he is under investigation for inciting racial hatred. And like many other figures of the far-right in Europe, martyrdom is a vehicle for publicity, the much sought-after tool that small movements and parties long for.
“Excuse the pun. This is a black economy,” Lowell laughs, justifying his statements on TV. He believes his showing at the EP elections means success for the movement he once described as the ‘300 Spartans.’ Hard-line, anti-immigration and strongly against having homosexuals in teaching positions or working with children, he believes Imperium would have polled several thousands votes more if it had not been eliminated at the early stages of the election.
This is the man who told The Times he was not mediocre enough to be elected for the EP elections.
Lowell’s grandiose ideas of colonising the planet Mars and his belief that Malta could be the spiritual centre of a new European superpower has done much to boost the ratings at Smash TV, the only television station to have given prime time airing to the independent candidates and lesser parties. Cane in hand, Lowell spared no punches when confronted with other independent candidates such as Nigerian-born Damian Iwueke, who failed to shake the system at the EP elections.
“The election result is a great loss for our country. We could have been at the pinnacle of Europe and united this new European wave, harnessing this great force at work. We have lost this opportunity,” Lowell says, who compared the electoral debacle with the time Malta lost out on integration with the United Kingdom.
Complaining that the media vilified and denigrated him, he recently refused a third offer to appear during Xarabank’s post-mortem for the EP elections: “I wrote ‘declined’ in a letter of reply, as bare an answer possible.” Lowell does not enjoy popular charades like Xarabank. That is why he also refused to go down to the Ta’ Qali counting hall:
“First of all, I don’t like the banging in the counting hall. Secondly, I am sure the two lesbian prostitutes would be jealously eyeing each other,” the lesbians, in Lowell speak, being none other than the MLP and the PN.
Lowell is setting his sights on the general elections, meeting with people involved in his movement, so far unknown figures, to field candidates for the elections:
“Our core group is going to meet to discuss this option. Our candidates would be a combination of brains and beauty. We don’t want ugly people with us,” Lowell chuckles, a rich statement for a party that should be counting on every vote it can secure, good-looking or not. If Lowell expected the ‘intelligent 20 per cent’ to rally to his side, why did such an election worthy of a protest vote not produce the opportunity to have Lowell enter the European Parliament?
He lambasted the “stupid vote” – the 23,000 first preference votes that went to Alternattiva Demokratika – to a party he said that believes in giving refugees the automatic right to work. “Is this what the Nationalists voted for?” he comments about the sway of votes to AD. “The Nationalists knew what was coming, but were too scared to be branded racists had they voted for us. They suffered a loss of votes to AD, and we who knew what the stakes were did not have the means to push forward our message, save for a few leaflets quoting AD policies on refugees.”
Lowell says he is shown admiration and respect from people wherever he goes. And now he is waiting for the chance to be arrested in the name of ideals like boycotting businesses employing refugees.
“It is obvious the two prostitutes and the Knisja Kattolika Korrotta (Corrupt Catholic Church) are worried. Because the people are stirring.”
Indeed, all 1,600 of them.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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