Adrian Delia’s ‘Mogadishu’ meme scandal: How a deleted post exposed Malta’s migrant fault line

Adrian Delia deletes ‘racist’ post, claiming he was misinterpreted: how a midnight meme lit Malta’s internet on fire

By 2 a.m. on Tuesday, the WhatsApp forwards had already reached Gozo. A grainy screen-grab—Nationalist MP Adrian Delia sharing a Facebook meme that juxtaposed a photo of a crowded Ħamrun street with the caption “Is this Malta or Mogadishu?”—was burning through every village group chat. By sunrise, the original post had vanished, replaced by a terse statement on Delia’s account: “Removed for misinterpretation. I condemn all forms of racism.” But in Malta, where 27 % of residents are foreign-born and village feuds are remembered for centuries, the damage was racing faster than the delete button.

The timing could not have been more toxic. June marks the start of the summer “boat season”, when NGO rescue ships file daily arrival notices and barstool pundits revive the great Maltese pastime of counting life-jackets. In the past week alone, 562 migrants landed on our shores, the largest influx since 2019. Meanwhile, the PN is limping through another identity crisis after its worst European election showing since 2004. Delia—still the party’s most polarising figure after surviving two confidence votes—has been trying to claw back populist oxygen from Labour’s Robert Abela, who has weaponised anti-immigration rhetoric with Trumpian flair. Instead, Delia handed his rivals a match.

Inside the PN, panic was immediate. “We’ve spent five years telling voters we’re the inclusive party,” one senior strategist told Hot Malta, speaking on condition of anonymity. “One screenshot and we’re back to 2013 slogans of ‘Malta for the Maltese’.” By noon, PN leader Bernard Grech had convened an emergency Zoom with MPs, after which the party released a damage-control statement praising “Malta’s proud tradition of hospitality from the Knights to modern asylum procedures”—a line that convinced no one and angered historians who pointed out the Knights literally sold passports in 1530.

On the streets of Ħamrun—the postcard of multicultural Malta where Somali grocery stores sit under baroque statues of saints—reaction was equally swift. “I’ve lived here 18 years, my kids speak better Maltese than half the village, and still we’re treated as guests,” says Malyuun Ali, who runs a money-transfer shop. Within hours, local volunteers plastered the main artery with A4 flyers reading “Mogadishu is beautiful, Ħamrun is beautiful, racism is ugly”. By evening, the same wall hosted a counter-protest: Maltese flags and a banner demanding “Secure Our Borders”. Police had to separate the two groups when someone threw a pastizz.

Cultural commentators see the flare-up as the latest episode in Malta’s uneasy reckoning with its own DNA. “We mythologise ourselves as a crossroads of civilisations, but we want the crossings to happen in 1565, not 2024,” says sociologist Dr. Katrine Camilleri, who has spent two decades interviewing arrivals at Ħal Far detention centre. “When an elected official shares a meme that literally erases black and brown people from the national portrait, it validates every racist aunt at Sunday lunch.”

The online fallout was even messier. TikTok teens stitched Delia’s now-deleted post with archival footage of 1970s Somali tourists dancing at the Malta Hilton, captioned “Mogadishu holidays our parents bragged about”. Others dug up a 2017 speech in which Delia warned that “Malta risks losing its identity” if migration went unchecked. By dusk, #MogadishuGate was trending nationwide, bumping Euro 2024 highlights off the timeline.

Yet the most sobering responses came from the pews. Fr. Jimmy Xerri, parish priest of Marsa—home to both grand baroque churches and overcrowded migrant centres—devoted Tuesday’s homily to the controversy. “We prayed for the neighbour we do not want,” he told Hot Malta afterwards. “Because unless we confront the log in our own eye, we will keep deleting posts but not hatred.”

Whether Delia faces formal censure remains unclear. The Commissioner for Standards in Public Life can investigate social-media conduct, but previous complaints against MPs have languished for years. What is certain is that the episode has reopened a wound that never quite heals in a country whose skyline changes faster than its attitudes. As fireworks cracked over Birkirkara last night—another village festa in full swing—one could almost hear the echo of an older Malta, where a deleted post is never truly gone, just stored in the collective memory next to every slight, every siege, every ship that ever docked on our liminal shore.