Now that the excited chatter has come to an end with this year’s Nobel Peace Prize eluding Donald Trump, it would be judicious to examine a curious, but relevant, dichotomy concerning the awards. The 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature — László Krasznahorkai is its recipient — has gone to the Hungarian novelist for his conviction that the hour of apocalyptic terror must be confronted by art that is a form of resistance. The choice of Mr Krasznahorkai has been met with wide approval. Not only is the world battling conflicts, big and small, but Mr Krasznahorkai’s melancholic, albeit absurd, chronicles of life under oppression in Hungary bear contemporary resonance given that this, around the world, is a time of ascendant authoritarianism. But the reaction to the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan politician and activist — has been fractious. This is because Ms Machado’s claim to be a guardian of democracy would raise eyebrows. Among other things, Ms Machado has openly called for American military intervention in her country; she is aligned to reactionary, right-wing movements and leaders; she was also a signatory to the Carmona Decree that sought to dismiss, after a coup in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, the nation’s Supreme Court and National Assembly. These are not accomplishments in the spirit of true democracy: Ms Machado’s tryst is emblematic of a struggle to replace the flawed Left regime of Nicolás Maduro with one with neoliberal stripes.
And this is where Oslo’s choice for the Nobel Peace Prize rings hollow. Honouring Ms Machado over countless other individuals and collectives engaged in unequal, anonymous battles for the democratic cause is likely to strengthen the perception that Alfred Bernhard Nobel’s vision has, over the years, not only been hijacked by the imperatives of the West’s geopolitical agenda but is also a vessel of the moral and ideological barometer of the Western world. The jury cannot be faulted on grounds of inconsistency. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to leaders and statesmen with questionable commitments to fraternity on many occasions in the past. At a time when Western hegemony is being challenged on a number of fronts, should not the wise men on the Nobel Committees cast their glance wider?