In Norway, criticism continues of María Corina Machado for giving her prize to Donald Trump, which is seen as an act of disdain.
Actress Liv Ullmann, upon receiving the European Film Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award, said of María Corina Machado: “I am Norwegian. If you are going to disdain the Nobel Prize, we should take it away from you,” an idea that has already been expressed by several prominent citizens of the Nordic country.
With the award in hand, the Norwegian actress dedicated her acceptance speech to the incident involving the Venezuelan far-right leader who, as is well known, gifted the Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump in a gesture of political demagoguery.
Renex’s analysis, posted on his X account, is illuminating: “Because we are not dealing with a donation: we are dealing with an offering. As in ancient rites, the subject places the sacred object at the feet of power, hoping for mercy, favor, or at least a glance that is not one of contempt.”
Analyzing the symbolic act that both far-right leaders attempted to create, Renex adds: “The problem is that the chosen altar does not honor sacrifices: it consumes them. The Nobel Prize, that award that purports to symbolize the moral conscience of humanity, is—to Machado’s misfortune—non-transferable. It does not belong to marble or metal, but to the historical act that justified it.”
And he concludes by describing Machado’s action: “Handing over the medal doesn’t make Trump a Nobel laureate; it makes the person handing it over something much worse: someone willing to empty their own political biography of meaning just to brush against the Bastille of imperial power.”
Colonial Submission
Chilean analyst Renex defines the gesture as colonial submission: “There is something profoundly colonial in this scene. Not in the geographical sense, but in the mental one. The deep-seated conviction that a country’s destiny is decided not by the maturation of its own democracy, but by the whims of a foreign leader.”
And he warns of the method: “That the presidency of Venezuela is obtained not through popular conviction, but through the indulgence of others. That sovereignty can be exchanged for a photo, a smile, or a handshake. Machado isn’t just handing over a medal. She’s handing over a cause. She’s handing over the fiction of moral autonomy that every democratic opposition needs to avoid becoming a caricature.”
No one was awarded the prize
Criticism of Machado and Trump’s actions isn’t limited to Norway; The New York Times also fires its barbs in an article titled: “Neither Trump nor Machado got what they wanted in the Nobel medal swap.”
According to columnist David Sanger, “The US president has María Corina Machado’s medal, but he is not recognized as a laureate of the prize. Machado did not get Trump’s backing to become president of Venezuela.”
Get a grip, ma’am
The Nobel Committee in Oslo, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize, stated on Friday that the award is “inseparable” from the recipient, following Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s handover of her medal to US President Donald Trump.
The mockery hasn’t stopped flooding social media, both in its criticism of María Corina Machado and Donald Trump.
As the Norwegian Nobel Committee states: “Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others. The decision is final and lasts forever.” A medal can change ownership, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize cannot. Therefore, if Machado presented the medal as if it were the prize, she committed intellectual fraud.
IMAGE CREDIT: Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado ( Photo: EFE )
[ SOURCE: teleSUR ]
