First Obama, Now Trump: Can We Take The Nobel Peace Prize Seriously?

Credit: Paul Morigi / WireImage
Credit: Paul Morigi / WireImage


Donald Trump must be having a rough time after losing to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucus, but news he’s been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize might cheer up that big old orange face of his. For the rest of us, it’s beyond ridiculous.

AFP News agency reports the Presidential hopeful’s name has been put forward for this year’s prestigious prize, along with great activists and role models from around the world.

Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, told AFP that he received a nomination letter arguing that the wig-wearing tycoon deserved the prize for:

His vigorous peace through strength ideology, used as a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, ISIS, nuclear Iran and Communist China.”

Trump seriously believes he can teleport the USA back in time to the glory days of the post-war boom by building a wall to keep out Mexicans and proposing a ban on Muslims entering the USA. It’s hardly an awe-inspiring peace process. Luckily, Harpviken doesn’t think Trump has a chance in hell of winning (but after Obama’s shock 2009 victory, maybe that doesn’t mean much).

Other figures nominated for the 2016 prize aren’t quite so controversial: The Pope, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a campaigner for ISIS rape survivors, and the amazingly kind Greek islanders who have given charity and compassion to millions of desperate refugees are also in the running.

According to Harpviken, Edward Snowden is also one of the favorites this year. Unless the world’s gone completely crazy, Snowden would have to beat Trump, right? Here’s a man who sacrificed his entire personal life to do something much bigger than himself: tell us the truth about the surveillance state. So we listened, we spread the word, we got mad, we got bored, and most of us forgot about it.

The same thing is happening right now in Europe with the refugee crisis. Compassion fatigue has spiralled into all-out racism and violence, and it’s mostly bad news from this side of the pond: Neo-Nazi gangs beating up refugee kids in Sweden, Denmark’s cruel new anti-refugee law, the rise of the far-right in Germany.

But the kind Greek islanders who gave everything to the desperate families fleeing the Syrian war aren’t complaining about immigration. These humble people have been saving lives and offering vital comfort and support to refugees on the front line for well over a year now, probably doing even more than the useless European parliament to ease an increasingly tragic situation. If the Greek islanders lose out to Trump, there’s probably no hope for humanity.

A paragraph from a Guardian report paints a moving scene of life on the islands:

On remote Greek islands, grandmothers have sung terrified little babies to sleep, while teachers, pensioners and students have spent months offering food, shelter, clothing and comfort to refugees who have risked their lives to flee war and terror.”

This is pretty disturbing stuff, but it’s hard to imagine billionaire Trump losing sleep over it. Hopefully, the bigoted lunatic’s name on the list is nothing to get excited about. The winner is drawn from thousands of nominations, which are by suggested by a network of politicians, professors, and other unknown posh folk. The five-member panel receive thousands of votes, and they also cast their own when they first meet to begin discussions on (that date we only see every four years) February 29.

Nobody believes Trump could actually be successful, but how much faith can we have in the Nobel Prize’s secretive and elitist electoral system? After all, if Barack Obama–  a man who statistically has a worse track record for war than George W. Bush himself – is capable of winning this prestigious award, then maybe the world is more topsy-turvy than we thought.

The winner will be announced on the second Friday in October. Let’s hope the panel judge wisely, dump the Trump and choose a real hero.

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