María Corina Machado has stood up against authoritarianism in Venezuela for more than a decade. I don't think awarding the prize should require that the recipient is a perfect person or holds all of the "correct" opinions according to bystanders who have no skin in the game.
replyShe genuinely fcked that one tho. Despite having skin in the game, that was one big loosing move.
replyThat vendepatria hasn't stood up to any authoritarianism; all she's done is buddy up with other authoritarians to try to obtain power. Her giving her Peace Prize to Trump might be one of the most humiliating things she could have done.
replyI don't put much weight on guilt by association. She's led public protests against the Maduro regime and had to go into hiding to escape imprisonment. She's advocated for free and fair elections, rule of law, separation of powers, civil liberties, decentralization, private property, and competitive markets. Can you explain how those actions and ideas are authoritarian?
replyShe also advocated for the USA to invade her country to depose Maduro. That alone should disqualify her from a Peace prize.
replyCan you explain how you can praise Trump if you
reply> advocated for free and fair elections, rule of law, separation of powers, civil liberties, decentralization, private property, and competitive markets.
Venezuela is America's bitch. As is much of South America with the honourable exceptions of Mexico and Cuba.
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replyThe Peace Prize seems somewhat hit or miss. I'm sure we all remember when it was given to Barack Obama for his lifelong work of not being George W Bush. And of course it was given to Henry Effin' Kissinger.
replyMaybe this speaks to the difficulty of peace in general. One asshole warmonger can destroy thousands of lives on a whim, but ending or preventing war takes long, steady efforts by large numbers of people. It's not very amenable to an individual prize.
Looking at the history it was awarded to organizations a decent number of times in the past, (even up to Nihon Hidankyo in 2024 which focuses on impact from Nagasaki/Hiroshima and anti-atomic weapon advocacy)....
replywhich to your point does seem to make more sense than singling out an individual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laur...
I think the best recipients tend to be those who are involved in "structural" work to advance the cause of peace, rather than those who have been involved in helping settle specific conflicts.
replyFor example, consider the difference between the first five recipients (all for founding various influential peace organisations) vs the sixth (for negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War).
In that respect, Pillay seems one of the better laureates of recent years.
I think people are making a mistake when they view the Peace Prize as an evaluation of a person's character or their entire career. Often it's targeting specific negotiations or treaties, which in retrospect were failed attempts at peace. This applies to Kissinger in the case of the Paris Peace Accords, Begin/Sadat for the Camp David Accords, Arafat/Peres/Rabin for the Oslo Accords, etc.
replyI can’t comment on the others, but this perspective doesn’t really make Kissinger’s case any better. Even his co-winner thought it was ridiculous and refused the prize.
replyMany "hard science" Nobel prize recipients also turned out to be complete embarrassment of themselves... There is even a name for that. "Nobel disease".
replyThese horrible Nobel Peace Prize recipients (and in some cases, Literature Prize recipients as well) are nothing like “Nobel disease”. Said recipient was praising the genocide perpetrator and war criminal (according to this year’s recipient, ironically) as well as performing the ass kissing and inviting foreign invasion before the award was given. The committee bestowed the award knowing very well what they’re getting into, and time and time again it’s nothing more than a political endorsement of a specific kind of “peace”—well, if you consider inviting foreign invasion an act of peace. Actually it’s more like endorsement of a particular ideology, sometimes not even peaceful.
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