The Nobel Prize Committee announced its annual awards over
the last week or so. Aside from the number of winners based at U.S.
universities (which have been until now the crown jewel of our education and
scientific communities), something else caught my attention: Are the Nobel
Prize judges…trolling Donald Trump?
I have no doubt the awards—the culmination of a long and
rigorous process—are apolitical and entirely well deserved. However, what the
committee said about the prizes and how the winners’ work was
described certainly highlight Trump’s ignorance and malevolence. If you are
going to shine a light on brilliance and excellence, Trump is going to be left
in the dark—and others will notice.
Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes was explicitly
asked about Trump’s clamoring for the Peace Prize. “In the long history of the
Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee has seen many types of campaign,
media attention,” Frydnes said. In other words, they are used to getting
nagged.
He continued: “This committee sits in a room filled with the
portraits of all laureates and that room is filled with both courage and
integrity. So, we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred
Nobel.” Hmm. Sounds like Trump fared poorly in comparison to all
those men and women esteemed for courage and integrity.
Photo by Anastasiya D
The explanation of the award itself seemed even more
pointed. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the
Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to Maria Corina Machado,” the committee explained.
“She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for 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.”
[Emphasis added here and below.] Democracy surely was front
and center (with a notable reminder that it exists in conflict with
dictatorship). In fact, democracy was mentioned in more detail and with greater
fervor than peace itself.
The statement about Machado read: “As the leader of
the democracy movement in Venezuela….” She was credited with
leading the opposition demanding “free elections and representative
government.” The committee explained:
This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy: our
shared willingness to defend the principles of popular rule, even though we
disagree. At a time when democracy is under threat, it is more
important than ever to defend this common ground.
The regime she opposed is described in language you would
(or will, on Saturday) hear at a No King’s Day rally: “a brutal,
authoritarian state,” where the few at the top enrich themselves, where
“violent machinery of the state is directed against the country’s own
citizens,” battling an opposition “systematically suppressed by means of
election rigging, legal prosecution and imprisonment.”
And in case anyone had missed the point: Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace.
However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat,
where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting
to violence. The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of
the population are not unique in the world.
We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those
in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed
towards authoritarian rule and militarization. In 2024, more elections were
held than ever before, but fewer and fewer are free and fair.
Maybe this was not intended to poke Trump in the eye—and the
statement is accurate without any consideration of him—but condemnation of his
tactics and outlook are the inevitable result of an award that elevates
democracy, the rule of law, fair elections, and a free media. Since Trump
antagonizes all those things, the award winners’ opponents sound
an awful lot like Trump.
Trump prosecutes his perceived enemies, sets the American
military against Americans, blows ships out of the water and murders those on
board without due process, bullies the media, and seeks to rig elections. In
other words, he embodies all the things Maria Corina Machado and other
deserving winners fight against.
So long as he continues doing all those things (i.e. so long
as he remains Trump), he will continue bearing a disturbing resemblance to the
other authoritarians around the globe—and will therefor never receive the award
he has so openly whined about deserving. (Buckle up, however).
Speaker of the House and go-to sycophant Mike Johnson,
instead of working to find a compromise and assist in re-opening our
government, is reportedly devoting his time and efforts to getting
Trump his prize in 2026. Good luck with that.)
Trump, his lackeys, and his cultish cheering section seem
not to understand that “peace” is not simply the absence of war. Conquest also
achieves the end of some wars. But that is not what we are after. Peace,
rather, requires renunciation of violence in favor of democratic and humanistic
values. Only then do you have a lasting peace during which human beings can
flourish.
The Peace Prize was not the only award that sounded like an
anti-Trump recitation. Consider one of the three Nobel Prize winners for
economics: Phillipe Aghion, a French economist and ½ of the winning team with
Peter Howitt of Brown University. The Guardian reported:
[He] warned that “dark clouds” were gathering amid
increasing barriers to trade and openness fueled by Donald Trump’s trade wars.
He also said innovation in green industries, and blocking the rise of giant
tech monopolies would be vital to stronger growth in future.
“I’m not welcoming the protectionist wave in the US, and
that’s not good for world growth and innovation,” he said.
To be clear, I don’t think he and the other winners received
their awards because they sound like a rebuttal to Trump.
Rather, Trump is so invariably, deeply, and consistently wrong on economics
that anyone recognized for merit invariably will contradict his irrational,
ignorant views.
In all likelihood, Nobel folks did not set out to troll
Trump. But if you are going to celebrate peace—real peace, and the democracy it
depends upon—alongside the keys to economic growth (free trade, scientific
discovery, dynamic and free societies), then you are going to find yourself
sounding like the retort to MAGA authoritarian, know-nothingism.
This year’s Nobel prize committee wound up illustrating the
degree to which Trump is inimical to peace, progress, and prosperity. The
committee should earn a prize for that.
-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is reader-supported. To
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