The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to shun US President Donald Trump’s efforts to obtain peace not just in the Middle East but in hot spots worldwide is unsurprising – amusing, even. It’s just the latest example of the political left’s wilful blindness in the face of facts. But it’s the lack of self-awareness that is unforgiveable and dangerous.
The message to the President’s supporters – and those on the fence about him – is that even the man’s achievements must go unrecognised, and worse, denied outright. Tell me the world is rigged without telling me it’s rigged.
With all the recent handwringing about the rise of the far right in America, Europe and beyond, one wonders how the left and its acolytes imagine those elements gain traction. It's doubtful that most Germans who joined the party of National Socialism understood they were signing up for the murder of millions of people, a Holocaust of the Jews and a second world war. The research suggests they were most concerned with out-of-control inflation, economic inequality and unrest, and the government’s role in the disintegration of the social and cultural fabric of their society. Sound familiar?
Even the committee’s choice, Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition politician whom most people have never even heard of, seems designed to raise hackles. Ms Machado has been rightly lauded for her attempts to achieve a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy, but it is Mr Trump who has turned up the heat on Venezuela’s president, labelling him a “narco-terrorist” and advertising a $50 million reward for his arrest.
And while it’s been difficult to take the Nobel committee or its peace prize seriously for years, since they awarded then president-elect Barack Obama in 2009 before he had even taken office, it’s harder to imagine this latest slight won’t have an impact. That Mr Obama’s subsequent eight years in office yielded no single foreign policy achievement save the later dismantled nuclear deal with Iran merely serves to illustrate the point.
And despite what many people may personally feel about Mr Trump, the facts remain that he ended the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia (their own leaders say this outright), achieved a ceasefire between India and Pakistan and put a stop to the rapidly escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. He also reached historic deals in the Middle East twice – first with the Abraham Accords in 2020, which have held despite Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza, and this week with the implementation of the first phase of his 20-point plan to put an end to the fighting there.
For most people, that’s certainly enough to be going on with, as the saying goes. But clearly not for a leftist machine that dominates media, politics and culture in the West. The refusal to allow this President to earn a place in the history books, denying him recognition for the things he has actually achieved, is another chink in the armour of the democratic values they supposedly champion. It’s irresponsible and appalling behaviour and plays directly into the narrative of the far right.
What do those on the far right believe? That they exist in a world that is against them. What do those in the middle believe? That they can’t trust in what traditional institutions of government and society are telling them. What does this decision do? Justify all of them in those beliefs.
The question is, why is the left trying to shove so many people with justified suspicions into the camp of the far right unless they are actually intent on the West tearing itself apart? A rational view would have been to see this Nobel Peace Prize as an opportunity to give the President and his supporters a justifiable win, demonstrating that two things can be true at the same time (a loathing of the messenger if not the message) and demonstrate a willingness to move the conversation forward. But this the left just cannot seem to do and it will come at a cost for us all.
