The Nobel Comes Home to Trump!
Santanu Dey
THE far-Right block of the European parliament has assembled at the Auditorium Hotel, responding to a call under the banner of Patriots for Europe. Of the 720 members of the European parliament, 86 are present. It hasn't even been twenty days since Trump began his second term as President. All across the globe, the far-Right have been in a celebratory mood. The conclave is being hosted by Vox, a neo-Francoist far-Right party in Spain. The Who’s Who of the European Right are all here. From Le Pen of the neo-fascist French political party National Rally to the German neo-Nazi far-Right party Alternative for Germany; from the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to all the far-right parties from countries such as Austria, Estonia, Poland, Portugal, Greece, and Italy.
The two-day Madrid conference sends out a clear warning: ‘We are the future’! All of them proudly proclaim Trump as a ‘dear friend’. They borrow the words of the American President– Make America Great Again (really, Make American Imperialism Great Again) and declare, ‘Make Europe Great Again’. Taking things up a notch, Orbán says, “Within the matter of a few weeks, the Trump Tornado has changed the world. Yesterday we were the heretics. Today, we are the mainstream.” Just as, only a few days later, the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, an ideological successor to Mussolini, would say in her video message aired at the grand neo-Fascist congregation Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the USA, “The Left is nervous, and with Trump’s victory, their irritation has turned into hysteria, not only because conservatives are winning, but because conservatives are now collaborating globally. When Bill Clinton and Tony Blair created the global leftist liberal network in the 90s, they were called statesmen. Today, when Trump, Maloni, Milei or maybe Modi talk, they are called a threat to democracy. This is the last double standard, but we are used to it, and the good news is people no longer believe in their lies, despite all the mud they throw at us. Citizens keep voting for us.”
All of this is natural. The norm, even. The interesting thing to note is that three non-European representatives had been invited to the conference in Madrid– the Likud Party led by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the far-right Argentinian President Javier Milei, and the leader of the far-Right Venezuelan political party Vente Venezuela– Maria Corina Machado.
In a video message, Machado invited her European compatriots to maintain their earnest attempts and steps to bring about a disciplined change in Venezuela. She said, “Today, Venezuela is the biggest threat to the West in our continent. It is a centre of organised crime and a safe haven for the enemies of democracy across the globe. We will bring an end to this rule” (La Jornada, 9 February, 2025).
On Friday, at 2:30 p.m. IST, bringing an end to much discussion and speculation, the Nobel Committee declared that the Peace Prize will be given to this Venezuelan opposition leader– Maria Corina Machado. Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the Chairman of the Nobel Committee has said she has been a “key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided... in a brutal authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis”.
What else has Machado done? “For supporting the [Venezuelan] struggle in every way,” she has dedicated her Nobel to Trump. Who has been awarded the Nobel as a ‘harbinger of peace’? A person who had written to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018, asking for his military intervention to remove President Nicolas Maduro from power.
That is not where it ends. On 21 July, 2020, Machado’s party, Vente, formally signed a treaty with Netanyahu’s Likud Party. The full text of this inter-party agreement is as follow:
“Pursuant to this official document, the Foreign Relations Division of the Likud Party, represented by Eli Vered Hazan, and the Vente Venezuela Party, represented by María Corina Machado, undertake to forge an alliance between our two parties to cooperate on political, ideological, and social matters, as well as advancing cooperation on issues related to strategy, geopolitics and security, among others, in order to create an operational partnership. The goal is to bring the people of Israel closer to the people of Venezuela while advancing, together, the Western values to which both parties subscribe: freedom, liberty, and a market economy.”
And added, “Both parties pledge to maintain contact and actively cooperate.”
In January 2009, Caracas had severed all diplomatic relations with Tel-Aviv in protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. At the time, Hugo Chavez was the President. Prior to that, Chavez had already expelled the Israeli ambassador from Caracas. This year, in January, former presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez and Machado held a tele-conference with the Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. On 15 February, Gonzalez and Sa’ar met in Germany, where Gonzalez declared his interest in travelling to Israel.
Machado had played a leadership role in the mass uprising in Venezuela in 2002 which had led to a temporary expulsion of a democratically elected President. She had signed the Carmona Decree, which totally erases the Constitution. And overnight, it had wiped away every government institution. Hand in glove with Washington, she has worked to prove the legitimacy of the change in the ruling system of Caracas. She has demanded foreign military intervention to ‘free’ Venezuela by force. She has praised Trump’s threats of attack and the installation of the US army in the Caribbean. When Trump sent a war ship, Machado was ready to play the part of his local representative. She has promised to keep Venezuela’s sovereignty mortgaged. She has promised to reopen the Venezuelan consulate in Jerusalem. Now, she wants to give up the oil, water, and infrastructure of her country to private corporations. This closely resembles the way in which Latin America had become a laboratory for testing neo-liberalism in the nineties.
And so, when Machado announces, ‘Venezuela’s struggle is Israel’s struggle,’ in reality,’ she wants to hide the true Venezuelan struggle against American imperialism. Even today, in every way, Venezuela is an ally to Palestine. And when the Nobel Committee awards the Peace Prize to Machado, it brazenly ignores the reckless genocide carried out by Netanyahu.
In the two years of the genocide, at least 67,000 Palestinians have lost their lives. And those are the official numbers. One in every 33 persons. Or, three per cent of the pre-genocide population. At least 20,000 children have died. In the last 24 months, at least one child has died every hour! The number of injured persons stands at 1,69,000. That’s one in every 14 persons. A Lancet study (2024) states that the government statistics of persons dying due to a direct injury is usually 20% of the actual figures. So, the actual number of deaths would be 3,35,000. That is 450 persons a day. In this time, 125 hospitals and clinics have been completely demolished. The number of deaths of health workers is 1,722. Eighty-nine per cent of Gaza’s water and drainage system has been affected. Ninety-two per cent of homes have turned to dust. The number of Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s prisons is 10,800. Three hundred media persons have been killed, ten of whom worked with Al-Jazeera.
Is this not a joke being played on peace? Rather, you could call it a cruel comedy featuring peace as the protagonist. Machado is actually Washington’s weapon in bringing about a change of power in Caracas. A dazzling mouthpiece of one-sided bans, privatisation, and foreign intervention.
In every sense, Machado is a part of the global nexus of fascism, Zionism, and neo-liberalism. But if Henry Kissinger can win the Nobel, why not Machado? Maybe, next year, it will be Netanyahu’s turn.
