The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded its 2025 Peace Prize to the leader of Venezuela’s far-right opposition, Maria Corina Machado, an event that is as significant as it is sinister.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded its 2025 Peace Prize to the leader of Venezuela’s far-right opposition, Maria Corina Machado, an event that is as significant as it is sinister.

The award was announced on October 9 in Oslo, Norway, a country whose wealth, strategic role in NATO, and large military investments position it as a bulwark for imperialist interests in Europe and beyond.

The award provides a glaring demonstration of the hypocrisy of capitalist public opinion as it is marshaled behind another catastrophic imperialist intervention in Latin America.

There is nothing unprecedented about bestowing the peace prize upon far-right or blood-drenched figures. If “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” as American songwriter, satirist and mathematician Tom Lehrer quipped in 1973, the award to Machado hammers another nail into its coffin.

In the years in between, the prize went to mass murderers and war criminals such as Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the former Irgun terrorist responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, and Aung San Suu Kyi, whose government was responsible for genocidal violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority. Barack Obama received the award in 2009, on the eve of launching a major military surge in Afghanistan and as his government was unleashing a wave of drone assassinations. Then as now, the prize served not as a reward to peacemakers, but as a tool for anointing those favored by imperialism and to legitimize war.

    • doben@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      21·
      11 hours ago

      Why hello, my confused, stereotypical American friend. I’m sure life’s hard over there in the imperial core, so let me suggest some light reading to you, while you wait for the complete authoritarian take-over from the right, while you keep whining about the left:

      Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti 
An accessible exploration of the differences between fascism and communism, addressing why Western societies often conflate the two, and how capitalist interests have portrayed socialist movements as “red fascists.” Especially readable for American audiences looking for a critical but not apologetic take on “tankies” and authoritarianism.

      The Authoritarian Specter by Bob Altemeyer 
A highly readable introduction to the psychology of authoritarianism, focusing especially on how these tendencies can arise in ordinary Americans — not just extremists or “the other side.” Explains why people across the spectrum endorse authoritarian politics.

      Or my I suggest a pretty good video, getting into the basics: Micheal Parenti’s Lecture from 1986

      It’s very hard to convince the American people, that they should send their sons, maybe who knows some day even their daugthers, to go fight and die in some jungle to make the world safe for United Fruit Companies or Chase Manhattan or Procter & Gamble or ITT.

      So you say: it’s to stop the threat of that communist country.

      It’s very hard to convince the American people, that a tiny country like Nicaragua or Vietnam or El Salvador is a threat to US security.

      So you say: It’s not Nicaragua. They are the puppets of the Cubans, who are the puppets of, bum bum bum, the big red bear in the Kremlin

      Snippet taken from 30:43 and on