The Nobel Peace Prize has a longstanding credibility problem. The singer Tom Lehrer famously remarked that “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize” in 1973. For the past few months, US president Donald Trump has waged an intense lobbying campaign to destroy any last trace of the prize’s credibility by awarding it to himself. When the Nobel Committee finally made their decision, many sighed in relief to learn that Trump’s efforts had been rebuffed. Unfortunately, the Committee’s ultimate decision is nothing to celebrate.
In the end, the prize went to far-right Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado. The press release from the Nobel Committee presents Machado as the sort of inspirational figure you’d expect to win such a prize. It tells of a political dissident courageously fighting the brutal dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro. Someone who fought for free elections only to have her candidacy blocked and was ultimately forced into hiding.
The press release makes a rallying call, “When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist.” And it proudly celebrates Machado’s “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.”
Suffice to say this is highly misleading. It’s true that the Maduro government has been sliding deeper into authoritarianism. Maduro did block Machado’s candidacy in the 2024 presidential election and did force her into hiding afterwards. But Machado’s own democratic credentials are questionable.
Who is Machado?
Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez came to power on a wave of mass, working-class anger. He was elected by large margins and his reforms were immensely popular, but he provoked the wrath of US imperialism and Venezuela’s own ruling elites, who attempted to oust him in a coup in 2002. Machado actively supported the coup. She signed the Carmona Decree in which the coup leaders sought to dissolve Chavez’s democratically elected government. It was only mass resistance that defeated the coup.
While Machado has faced repression at the hands of Maduro, she herself actively praises right-wing authoritarians like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. She spoke at a conference of the far-right Patriots of Europe alongside Viktor Orbán, Geert Wilders, and Marine Le Pen. She’s maintained close ties to Benjamin Netanyahu while he wages genocidal war on the Palestinian people.
Over the years, the “Bolivarian revolution” Chávez kicked off has decayed under the blows of sanctions, inflation, austerity, and democratic backsliding. Maduro’s authoritarianism has been directed against the left as well as the right, cracking down on the Venezuelan Communist Party as well as Machado. But without a well-organized working-class challenge, Machado has become the face of opposition to Maduro. Among Maduro’s many crimes is that he’s allowed the far-right coup plotters of the Chávez years to rebrand themselves as democrats.
When Machado was awarded the Peace Prize, many saw it as a rebuke to Trump, especially with the press release talking about the need to “rise and resist” authoritarian leaders. The White House responded to the decision with the expected state-sponsored tantrum, claiming the Nobel Committee “proved they place politics over peace” because they wouldn’t give Trump the toy he wanted.
But Machado is Trumpian to the core. She celebrated her win by declaring, “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.” Despite the prize being ostensibly about peace, Machado has praised Trump’s extra-judicial killings in the Caribbean, which are dragging the US and Venezuela closer to war. Rather than a rebuke to Trump, awarding the prize to Machado was as full an embrace of Trumpism as they could get without making the embarrassing step of actually giving Trump the prize.
The Cynicism of the Nobel Prize
All this clearly goes against the Nobel Committee’s stated mission to promote “the greatest benefit to humankind.” But the Nobel Prizes have always been cynical. Alfred Nobel was an industrialist best known in his time as the inventor of dynamite. The Nobel Prizes were a PR move to counter Nobel’s reputation as a “merchant of death.”
The Nobel Peace Prize is best seen as a snapshot of the concerns of the ruling class at a given moment in history. Today we’re seeing a rightward shift in the ruling class, pushing back against the mass struggles of the 2010s. The Nobel Committee is responding accordingly.
There are plenty of people far more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than Machado or Trump. The “Gen Z rebellions,” around the world, from Nepal to Madagascar to Peru, have a far greater claim to the title “courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist.” An actual challenge to war is seen in the global Palestine solidarity movement, from the Sumud flotilla to the Italian general strike.
Actually bringing about world peace requires mass working-class struggle to overthrow the imperialist forces who constantly drag society into war. Of course, the capitalists won’t give anyone a prize for that.
