Donald Trump woke up to some bad news, that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee couldn’t bring themselves to debase themselves and crawl through the gutter to give him a Nobel Peace Prize. He was genuinely angry, the spoilt little rich kid, completely bereft of any sense of his own capabilities and achievements, thought he should get one just because he wanted it. You know how it is, spoilt rich brat shouts I want, I want, I want and the parents give it to them, whereas most of us got a clip round the ear for that type of behaviour.
The more intelligent right wingers and outright fascists in his government were just as nonplussed by what had happened. They wondered how a committee that had debased itself for most of its history and had given the prize to people just as unsavoury as Trump, couldn’t hold their nose one more time and do their master’s bidding.
The common view of the prize is that it is one that is awarded to those who have sought to make the world a better place. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth when you look at the list of winners. There are some exceptions to his rule, which I will look at and then there are the institutions that win it such as the Red Cross, the United Nations and laughably even the European Union, despite its member states regularly bombing just about everywhere. Then there are the individuals. Many of them represent the great and good in bourgeois society, heads of state, former heads of state, leaders of major institutions, those that have done the bidding of the imperial powers at various points in their lives and then of course there are the mass murderers, racists and upper-class thugs with their finger on the trigger. Such was it so, from the very beginning.
The first US citizen to win it and also the first of a number of US presidents was Theodore Roosevelt. He was awarded it in 1906, allegedly for his efforts to bring an end to the war between Russia and Japan. Whatever! This man was no pacifist by any stretch of the imagination, quite the opposite in fact. He defended the US invasion of the Philippines and it was he who stole the province of Panama from Colombia in 1903 and began building the canal. Prior to that, he had played a key role in the war with Spain. Nonetheless, he was given the prize as he brokered an end to a war in a manner which favoured his view of US imperialist interests. He was one of the first nasties to get it. Many of the others in the first part of the 20th Century were diplomats, politicians and the like who brokered or advocated the easing of tensions etc. They were rewarded as part of the Old Boys Imperial Club. The prize did not have the misplaced honour it has today as something given to “people” who contribute positively to humanity. It was generally speaking an inter-institutional pat on the back.
In the late 1950s and 1960s onwards other names began to crop up, which were seen as being outside the realm of governments and international institutions, though they were still a minority, amongst them Albert Luthull, the head of the then non-violent African National Congress who was awarded the prize in recognition of his non-violent struggle against Apartheid. Then came Martin Luther King, a surprising nomination and given the context of the time, one which angered many of the forebears of Trump’s MAGA movement. Though there was an institutional setting even for MLK, the passing of the US Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Then in 1973, came one of the nastiest of the nasties: Henry Kissinger. He was awarded it for negotiating a ceasefire as the first step in the US surrender to the Vietnamese revolutionaries who beat the most powerful empire the world had seen, though the Nobel Ctte. didn’t quite put it like that. They framed it in the usual institutional terms of previous winners. Kissinger, to be clear, was the mass murderer responsible for the clandestine carpet bombing of Cambodia,[1] then a neutral country, during the Vietnam war, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands with some estimates going as high as 500,000 - and shortly before accepting his prize, he also overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. These were minor matters to the Nobel Ctte. Even today, this is how the Nobel Ctte. describes this criminal who should have swung from the gallows for his crimes. It is of course the speech given by Aase Lionaes, Chairperson of the Nobel Committee, at the ceremony itself.
Kissinger, on the other hand, places a great deal of emphasis on the fact that peace was bound up with an international order, based on universally accepted principles for the behaviour of states in their relations to one another. In those days, too, political systems differed widely, and the great powers had a great many conflicting interests. But by and large they respected these principles and rules, and on this basis they tried to prevent differences of systems and interests leading to war.
It was therefore quite natural that Kissinger should place very great emphasis on diplomacy as a factor for the promotion of peace as well, diplomacy both as a profession and as an art.
The overriding idea in Kissinger’s views on foreign policy is that peace must be based on rules to which all states, at any rate the great powers, adhere in their conduct. It is not sufficient for one single state, or a number of states, to do so.[2]
I think that is clear enough. There are no caveats on the Nobel page to that speech, no footnotes to mitigate their endorsement of a mass murderer. They give prizes to the vilest people on the planet and then wash their hands of it, falsifying the record in a style that would do Orwell’s 1984 justice. War is Peace.
Kissinger was jointly awarded the prize alongside the Vietnamese negotiator Lê Đức Thọ. Thọ refused the prize. Lionaes said in her speech that:
Le Duc Tho has informed the Committee that at present he is not in a position to be able to accept the Prize, giving as his reason the present situation in Vietnam[3]
And went on to say they would hold the prize for him for a year. Not so, he outright rejected the prize. The reasons given, tell us everything you need to know about the prize and why it is not surprising that a Venezuelan escuálida won it this time. He stated:
And in his letter to the Nobel Ctte. he said:
He did the right thing and turned it down and prevented the Nobel Ctte. from rewriting history. The Yanks lost to a militarily, logistically and economically weaker force, but one that like the Palestinians had the advantage that they were not strangers in a strange land stomping through it. The Nobel Ctte. frequently warps, distorts and rewrites the history of conflicts, in such a manner that favours imperialism. Thọ afforded them no such opportunity in the case of Vietnam. A bloody murderous empire was defeated in the paddy fields by the peasant farmers who planted rice in those same fields. Tenacity, courage, and mass support won the day.
Kissinger wasn’t the last of the nasties. There were others to come. Barack Obama is just one of them, though when they gave him his prize, it was pre-emptive and he hadn’t yet set the custom of afternoon tea on Tuesdays to choose which Pakistani wedding his drones would bomb. The terrorist Menachem Begin got it as he convinced Egypt to surrender and collaborate fully with the Zionist project. This Polish Zionist was another mass murderer and his record on the matter was in the public domain at the time. He went on to invade Lebanon and his minister for defence, Ariel Sharon (Scheinerman) was responsible for the massacre of Sabra and Chatila, in which 3,500 civilians were murdered by his henchmen. Other Israeli murderers would win it.
Yitzhak Rabin was one such criminal. As Israeli Minister of Defence it was he who introduced the Iron Fistpolicy in the West Bank of detention without trial, demolishing houses, censorship, deportations and beatings, including the infamous Breaking of Bones, made notorious through the filming of Israeli soldiers doing exactly that to young Palestinians, beating them with rocks. His criminal record is much longer than that though. He played a key part in the Nakba and gave Ben-Gurion the go ahead to expel 70,000 Palestinians from the cities of Lydda and Ramle.[5]
Shimon Peres (Perski) was another. He and Rabin both got their prize for their role in getting Yassir Arafat to surrender to the Zionists at Oslo. Arafat was also included and gleefully accepted and wallowed in the cesspool of betrayal, he was no Lê Đức Thọ. But then neither was Mandela, he accepted his prize alongside the criminal FW de Klerk whose Apartheid role was, if you’ll pardon the expression, whitewashed at the Nobel ceremony.
Of course, some might say I am being unfair, that lots of decent people won it. Yes, there have been some, not lots, but they never won it just because their cause was just. One of the first was Carl Von Ossietsky, a German activist who was imprisoned by the Nazis and died of tuberculosis whilst in prison. In 1936, he was awarded the prize for his work against German rearmament and militarism, or as they put it “for his burning love for freedom of thought and expression and his valuable contribution to the cause of peace”. He was a worthy winner, but the problem is that he had been campaigning for years, long before Hitler came to power with no support from the great and good who get to decide such matters. Some support before Hitler had come to power may have helped him and others. Rigaberto Menchú, the Guatemalan indigenous leader won it in 1992, long after the genocide of some 200,000 indigenous people in Guatemala in the early 1980s[6] and after her father Vicente was murdered in 1980 along with 37 other people including some Spanish diplomats when the Police set fire to the Embassy following a protest occupation.[7] When she got it, the writing was on the wall, the URNG was going to do a deal with the regime. It no longer mattered that much.
When it suits western governments is a key component. In Ireland, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan won the prize in 1976. The Peace People was presented as a pacifist movement and yet it had little to say about violence from Loyalist groups nor the British state either. In fact, it completely ignored the circumstances that gave rise to their organisation being founded, the deaths of the Maguire children following the shooting dead of IRA volunteer Danny Lennon by the British army which caused his car to veer off the road into the children. They blamed the IRA. After winning the prize and even before, they wined and dined with the powerful, everyone from the English queen, Elizabeth Windsor to the Pope. After they got the prize money, Betty Williams stuck to her principles, took the money and ran off to live in the USA and soon looked like she had a walk on role in Dallas. As she infamously put it herself, she needed the money.[8] Well, who doesn’t?
Which brings us to the latest winner María Corina Machado. They didn’t feel they could give it to such an obvious eejit as Donald Trump, he wouldn’t have the intellectual gravitas for the ceremony and the decorum of the event is important to the Norwegians. So, they did the next best thing, they gave it to one of his acolytes and as with many past nasty winners, like Kissinger, they painted a picture of a living saint. She is portrayed as a peaceful campaigner for change in Venezuela.
According to the Nobel Ctte:
Unfortunately, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee put the aggressor and the victim of aggression on the same par. ... That was a blunder,’
And in his letter to the Nobel Ctte. he said:
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the greatest prizes in the world… But the United States conducted a war of aggression against Vietnam. It is we, the Vietnamese people, who made peace by defeating the American war of aggression against us, by regaining our independence and freedom.[4]
He did the right thing and turned it down and prevented the Nobel Ctte. from rewriting history. The Yanks lost to a militarily, logistically and economically weaker force, but one that like the Palestinians had the advantage that they were not strangers in a strange land stomping through it. The Nobel Ctte. frequently warps, distorts and rewrites the history of conflicts, in such a manner that favours imperialism. Thọ afforded them no such opportunity in the case of Vietnam. A bloody murderous empire was defeated in the paddy fields by the peasant farmers who planted rice in those same fields. Tenacity, courage, and mass support won the day.
Kissinger wasn’t the last of the nasties. There were others to come. Barack Obama is just one of them, though when they gave him his prize, it was pre-emptive and he hadn’t yet set the custom of afternoon tea on Tuesdays to choose which Pakistani wedding his drones would bomb. The terrorist Menachem Begin got it as he convinced Egypt to surrender and collaborate fully with the Zionist project. This Polish Zionist was another mass murderer and his record on the matter was in the public domain at the time. He went on to invade Lebanon and his minister for defence, Ariel Sharon (Scheinerman) was responsible for the massacre of Sabra and Chatila, in which 3,500 civilians were murdered by his henchmen. Other Israeli murderers would win it.
Yitzhak Rabin was one such criminal. As Israeli Minister of Defence it was he who introduced the Iron Fistpolicy in the West Bank of detention without trial, demolishing houses, censorship, deportations and beatings, including the infamous Breaking of Bones, made notorious through the filming of Israeli soldiers doing exactly that to young Palestinians, beating them with rocks. His criminal record is much longer than that though. He played a key part in the Nakba and gave Ben-Gurion the go ahead to expel 70,000 Palestinians from the cities of Lydda and Ramle.[5]
Shimon Peres (Perski) was another. He and Rabin both got their prize for their role in getting Yassir Arafat to surrender to the Zionists at Oslo. Arafat was also included and gleefully accepted and wallowed in the cesspool of betrayal, he was no Lê Đức Thọ. But then neither was Mandela, he accepted his prize alongside the criminal FW de Klerk whose Apartheid role was, if you’ll pardon the expression, whitewashed at the Nobel ceremony.
Of course, some might say I am being unfair, that lots of decent people won it. Yes, there have been some, not lots, but they never won it just because their cause was just. One of the first was Carl Von Ossietsky, a German activist who was imprisoned by the Nazis and died of tuberculosis whilst in prison. In 1936, he was awarded the prize for his work against German rearmament and militarism, or as they put it “for his burning love for freedom of thought and expression and his valuable contribution to the cause of peace”. He was a worthy winner, but the problem is that he had been campaigning for years, long before Hitler came to power with no support from the great and good who get to decide such matters. Some support before Hitler had come to power may have helped him and others. Rigaberto Menchú, the Guatemalan indigenous leader won it in 1992, long after the genocide of some 200,000 indigenous people in Guatemala in the early 1980s[6] and after her father Vicente was murdered in 1980 along with 37 other people including some Spanish diplomats when the Police set fire to the Embassy following a protest occupation.[7] When she got it, the writing was on the wall, the URNG was going to do a deal with the regime. It no longer mattered that much.
When it suits western governments is a key component. In Ireland, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan won the prize in 1976. The Peace People was presented as a pacifist movement and yet it had little to say about violence from Loyalist groups nor the British state either. In fact, it completely ignored the circumstances that gave rise to their organisation being founded, the deaths of the Maguire children following the shooting dead of IRA volunteer Danny Lennon by the British army which caused his car to veer off the road into the children. They blamed the IRA. After winning the prize and even before, they wined and dined with the powerful, everyone from the English queen, Elizabeth Windsor to the Pope. After they got the prize money, Betty Williams stuck to her principles, took the money and ran off to live in the USA and soon looked like she had a walk on role in Dallas. As she infamously put it herself, she needed the money.[8] Well, who doesn’t?
Which brings us to the latest winner María Corina Machado. They didn’t feel they could give it to such an obvious eejit as Donald Trump, he wouldn’t have the intellectual gravitas for the ceremony and the decorum of the event is important to the Norwegians. So, they did the next best thing, they gave it to one of his acolytes and as with many past nasty winners, like Kissinger, they painted a picture of a living saint. She is portrayed as a peaceful campaigner for change in Venezuela.
According to the Nobel Ctte:
she is being awarded it due to her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.[9]
In their press release they cite her as saying “It was a choice of ballots over bullets.”[10] This is the same woman who shortly after winning dedicated it to Trump. She has supported Trump’s military build-up in the Caribbean and even his attacks on sea boats, murdering migrants.[11] But the Nobel Ctte. felt that someone who supports murder on the open seas in breach of international law is a worthy peace prize winner.
She is an ardent Zionist and supporter of the genocide and had previously called for Israel to take military action against Venezuela.[12] Hardly the words of a pacifist. She is also in favour of privatising Venezuela’s economy including the state oil company. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, and Norway is one of the largest oil producers and exporters in the world. I am sure Machado will thank them with a few contracts and oil fields when the day comes.
Ever since Chávez came to power in Venezuela, the opposition, aptly referred to locally as Escuálidos (weaklings) have campaigned against the government, complaining about everything from poor people getting free medical care (I kid you not) to educational programmes. These are the people who had run Venezuela with an iron hand, they are the same people responsible for the Caracazo massacre in 1989 carried out by the Venezuelan state in which up to 3,000 people were murdered.[13] A watershed moment in Venezuela which would eventually lead to Chávez taking power.
She is as deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize as Henry Kissinger i.e. she fully deserves it. It has almost always been awarded to people intrinsic to the system and when given to critics they are always the safe option at that point in time. The prize is ignoble, one we shouldn’t pay too much attention to. When Neville Chamberlain was nominated, a Swedish anti-fascist E.C.G. Brandt nominated Hitler as a sarcastic satirical comment on Chamberlain’s peace in our time surrender of the Sudetenland and the annexation of Austria by Hitler. His mocking letter to the Nobel Ctte. is not all that different in tone to much of the stuff spouted about other winners, such as Kissinger and the latest abomination to win it. He said of Hitler
She is an ardent Zionist and supporter of the genocide and had previously called for Israel to take military action against Venezuela.[12] Hardly the words of a pacifist. She is also in favour of privatising Venezuela’s economy including the state oil company. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, and Norway is one of the largest oil producers and exporters in the world. I am sure Machado will thank them with a few contracts and oil fields when the day comes.
Ever since Chávez came to power in Venezuela, the opposition, aptly referred to locally as Escuálidos (weaklings) have campaigned against the government, complaining about everything from poor people getting free medical care (I kid you not) to educational programmes. These are the people who had run Venezuela with an iron hand, they are the same people responsible for the Caracazo massacre in 1989 carried out by the Venezuelan state in which up to 3,000 people were murdered.[13] A watershed moment in Venezuela which would eventually lead to Chávez taking power.
She is as deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize as Henry Kissinger i.e. she fully deserves it. It has almost always been awarded to people intrinsic to the system and when given to critics they are always the safe option at that point in time. The prize is ignoble, one we shouldn’t pay too much attention to. When Neville Chamberlain was nominated, a Swedish anti-fascist E.C.G. Brandt nominated Hitler as a sarcastic satirical comment on Chamberlain’s peace in our time surrender of the Sudetenland and the annexation of Austria by Hitler. His mocking letter to the Nobel Ctte. is not all that different in tone to much of the stuff spouted about other winners, such as Kissinger and the latest abomination to win it. He said of Hitler
Authentic documents reveal that in September 1938 world peace was in great danger; it was only a matter of hours before a new European war could break out. The man who during this dangerous time saved our part of the world from this terrible catastrophe was without no doubt the great leader of the German people. In the critical moment he voluntarily did not let weapons speak although he had the power to start a world war.
Sadly, there still are a great number of people who fail to see the greatness in Adolf Hitler’s struggle for peace. Based on this fact I would not have found the time right to nominate Hitler as a candidate to the Nobel Peace Prize had it not been for a number of Swedish parliamentarians who have nominated another candidate, namely the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. This nomination seems to be poorly thought. Although it is true that Chamberlain through his generous understanding of Hitler´s struggle for pacification has contributed to the saving of world peace, the last decision was Hitler’s and not Chamberlains! Hitler and no one else is first and foremost to be thanked for the peace which still prevails in the greater part of Europe; and this man is also the hope for peace in the future.
This nomination was brilliant satire, but as with much satire, very close to the bone. What he says of Hitler in his mocking letter sounds eerily similar to what the Nobel Ctte. itself has said of many of the winners, including the nasties. I know that sometimes we think well wouldn’t it be great if Francesca Albanese won it. But that is to place your trust in the enemy. It is, by and large, with few exceptions a reward for service to the system. It is a credit to Albanese that she didn’t win it and we should stop participating in this nonsense.
[1] BBC (02/12/2023) Henry Kissinger’s Cambodia legacy of bombs and chaos. Ouch Sony & George Wright.
[2] See.
[3] Ibíd.
[4] UPI (17/12/1986) Personality Spotlight: Le Duc Tho: Vietnam’s poet-revolutionary.
[5] Electronic Intifada (25/09/2025) Why is AOC honoring an Israeli war criminal?. Ali Abunimah.
[6] Barbara M. Recinos (17/12/2024) Genocide in Guatemala: The Massacres of the Ixil Region.
[7] GHRC (n/d) The Burning of the Spanish Embassy Case.
[8] Irish Times (18/03/2025) Death of peace campaigner and Nobel Laureate Betty Williams. Gerry Moriarty.
[9] See.
[10] See https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2025/press-release/
[11] New York Times (10/10/2025) Peace Prize Winner Has Supported Trump’s Military Actions in the Caribbean. Julie Turkewitz.
[12] Times of India (12/10/2025) Supported Israel? Why Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado is facing backlash; old posts resurface.
[13] Venezuela Analysis (01/03/2016) Venezuela’s Caracazo: State Repression and Neoliberal Misrule.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
