COMMENT ON AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK
“Incredible, But True:
How Hitler, Mussolini Nearly Received Nobel Prizes”
This shouldn't be surprising.
Hitler, before he launched the most destructive enterprise
in human history, made one of the great speeches in history about peace, to
quote William Shirer, the great journalist on the Third Reich.
And Hitler was admired by many prominent people at the time,
including the British Royal Family and half the British aristocracy.
He was also Time Magazine’s Man of the Year for 1938.
But beyond all that, the history of the Peace Prize is quite
blighted with political errors to the point I believe of having become
meaningless.
It has included warmongers and at least two Israeli
terrorists. It included an imperialist like Theodore Roosevelt and an absolute
do-nothing at the time of his award, Obama, a do-nothing who later proved yet
another warmonger.
This year, as has been done before, it was awarded to an organization,
one which has no hope of ever achieving its goal. Yes, it would be nice to get
rid of nuclear weapons, but only a fool or a propagandist says that it can
happen.
In making this year’s again-meaningless award, the Committee
ignored obvious and deserving candidates, including Julian Assange.
A prize, if it means anything, must award actual
achievements, but in a great many instances the Nobel Peace Prize does not do
so, and, in fact, by operating in the way it does, the Peace Prize is
completely out-of-step with the Nobel prizes for science, prizes where only genuine
achievement counts.
Even one of the greatest scientists of the century, Albert Einstein,
did not get the prize for what all regard as his greatest work, the theory of
relativity, because it was regarded at the time as a not-fully verified theory.
The Peace Prize has been reduced to a shabby political tool reflecting
American political interests and a statement, occasionally, of feeble dreamer
hopes from Scandinavia. Any respect that it still commands is extremely threadbare
at best.
