By Franklin Frederick
Maria Corina Machado recently congratulated President Donald Trump for kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a military action that left around 100 people dead. In an interview with Fox News, she praised Trump, describing Washington’s actions as “a giant step for humanity, for freedom and human dignity.” (1)
Maria Corina Machado also stated that she wants to share her Nobel Peace Prize with the US President.
Maria Corina Machado is following in the footsteps of another Nobel Prize winner, ironically a Norwegian, Knut Hamsun, winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Born 1859, Knut Hamsun had an extremely difficult childhood, hardly attended school, went hungry, emigrated twice to the United States, always failing to settle there, and eventually returned to Norway. After several failed attempts to launch himself as a writer, in 1888 the publication in a Danish literary journal of an excerpt from the novel HUNGER, on which he was then working, was an immediate success. The novel was published in its entirety in 1890 in Oslo, then called Christiania. HUNGER is a true landmark in Modernist literature, and Hamsun influenced several authors such as Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, Stefan Zweig, and Ernest Hemingway. James Joyce nicknamed him “Old King Knut,” and Isaac Bashevis Singer stated:
“All modern narrative in the 20th century comes from Hamsun.”
Thomas Mann begins a speech in honor of Knut Hamsun’s 70th birthday as follows:
“It is with deep shyness that I take up my pen to congratulate Knut Hamsun. His early works of fiction, which appeared at the turn of the century, were one of the most intimate literary experiences of my youth…”
This author, who in the 1920s was considered one of the most important in the world, was perhaps the most reviled writer on the planet in 1945 and a source of shame for his country. Knut Hamsun was a collaborator, defender, and propagandist of Nazism. A true precursor to Maria Corina Machado, in May 1943 Knut Hamsun sent Joseph Goebbels, Minister of the German Reich, his Nobel Prize medal with the following dedication:
“Nobel created his prize as a reward for the ‘most idealistic’ work… I know of no one, Mr. Minister, who has worked so tirelessly and idealistically, year after year, in writing and orally, for Europe and for the cause of humanity as you have.”
Marina Corina Machado may be inspired by these words when she shares, as she wishes, her Nobel Prize with Donald Trump. Certainly, in the eyes of Maria Corina Machado, no one has worked “so tirelessly and idealistically, year after year,” for the cause of humanity and freedom as Donald Trump.
After the war, Knut Hamsun was arrested as a traitor to his country, prosecuted, and died poor, blind, and deaf, alongside his wife, who had also been a successful author of children’s books in Nazi Germany.
I don’t believe Maria Corina Machado will ever be prosecuted as a traitor to her homeland, Venezuela, nor for the many lies and all the harm she has done to her country. Like Hamsun in his old age, she is already deaf and blind to the suffering of the Palestinians and all the peoples of Latin America.
Unlike Hamsun, who despite everything was a great writer who still deserves to be read and who left an important literary legacy, Maria Corina Machado will leave no legacy; she is nothing, an empty figure inflated by the Empire’s anti-Chavista propaganda. Hamsun truly deserved to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, but the Nobel Peace Prize for Marina Corina Machado is a joke, a crude attempt to attribute some value to her political activity.
In Norway, the country that hosts the committee responsible for selecting the Nobel Peace Prize winner, the traditional torchlight march in Oslo celebrating this award was canceled by the Norwegian Peace Council because the organization disagreed with the choice of winner, an unprecedented move in the history of the Nobel Prizes.
The embarrassment over this choice was so great in Norway in fact, that those responsible for organizing the award ceremony had to resort to the most absurd and unbelievable story—of Maria Corina Machado’s alleged “escape” from Venezuela, where she certainly was not—to justify her delay for the ceremony and the cancellation of all press conferences scheduled for the occasion. There was the risk that she would only cause more embarrassment if she would be allowed to speak…
It must be difficult to be a Norwegian today… One of Norway’s greatest writers, winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, reveals himself to be an ardent supporter of Nazism and gives his Nobel medal to Joseph Goebbels as a gift… And the Norwegian committee decides to award the Nobel Peace Prize (!!!) to a virulent advocate of an armed invasion of her own country, of Palestinian genocide, who congratulates the US President on the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela and the death of more than 100 people. And Maria Corina Machado thinks that Donald Trump deserves to share in the “glory” of her Nobel Peace Prize.
On the streets of Oslo, Knut Hamsun’s Christiania, where the starving protagonist of HUNGER wandered in despair and pain, many Norwegians today, I believe, walk with their heads bowed and in silence, ashamed.
Meanwhile, in Denmark, a Scandinavian country like Norway and where HUNGER was first published, people wait with fear and apprehension to see what Donald Trump will do to take possession of Greenland. The most famous Danish writer in the world is undoubtedly Hans Christian Andersen. In his fable The Emperor’s New Clothes, a child subverts the elaborate lie surrounding the emperor’s new clothes by shouting, “The Emperor is naked!” For Andersen in the 19th century, this denunciation was enough—shouting “The Emperor is naked” was practically a revolution. In our darker and shameless times, however, when brute force seems to decide by itself what is right, if someone announces that the Emperor is naked, the response will be:
– So what?
Maria Corina Machado is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—so what?
Donald Trump invades Venezuela and kidnaps its president—so what?
The Emperor wants Venezuela’s oil, the Emperor is naked—so what?
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