Nobel Peace Prize for BLM – satire at Nobel’s expense

 

The thing about prizes that people often forget is that they are only as good as the recipients. Rather than a prize giving esteem to its awardees, it is the awardees who give prestige to the prize.

 

The recent Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded to Sir Roger Penrose, is a good example of the recipient elevating the prize. Penrose is the equivalent of Einstein for our generation. The work for which he was awarded the prize (done almost 60 years ago) proved Einstein wrong by showing mathematically that black holes are a direct consequence of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, something that Einstein himself did not believe. It is lucky for the Nobel that Penrose is still going strong at 89, as the prize is not given posthumously.

 

It might be somewhat easier to award the Nobel for the hard sciences, of which there are some objective standards and consensus on the importance of discoveries. However, when it comes to the subjective topics, such as literature and increasingly more so, peace, the luster of Nobel has become increasingly blemished – to the point where its parody prize, the IgNobel prize, seems often much more sensible.

 

Some notable examples are: Barack Obama receiving the prize for precisely having done nothing towards world peace in 2009. He did subsequently massively expand the use of drones in a covert war, without congress approval, to kill thousands in the Middle East, including hundreds of civilians, and including American citizens. 

His policy facilitated the growth of ISIS by withdrawing troops prematurely from Iraq in 2011. He intervened in Libya without a long-term strategy, inculcating the second Libyan civil war. His weakness towards Bashar al-Assad, after drawing a harsh verbal red line regarding Assad’s use of chemical weapons that turned out to be only words, facilitated the situation in Syria, where upwards of 600,000 people have died and millions displaced. Compared to these, his Fast and Furious scandal which put thousands of weapons into the hands of the Mexican drug cartel is only a minor blotch. If not for a fawning media, Obama’s legacy will be rightfully in tatters. And the Nobel committee should look a bit sheepish about their fan-girl-like enthusiasm in giving him a Nobel in the hope that he is indeed the Messiah.

 

Other ‘winners’ of the prize that should make you raise a quizzical eyebrow include Kofi Annan, who was the head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations when the Rwanda massacre occurred. Despite being told of the planned attack by the Hutus by the Canadian General Dallaire, who repeatedly requested for more troops, Annan withdrew the little troop that was there and left the Tutsis to fend for themselves. Some 500,000-1,000,000 people died, including about a third of the pygmy Batwa people (10,000), and almost half a million women were raped.

Rwanda refugee camp, 1994, by Sabastiao Salgado

And perhaps to cap it off, Stalin was nominated twice, Mussolini too, and even Hitler was graced with a nomination (although as a satire).  

So, given the spotted history of the judgement of the Nobel Committee, the recent nomination of Black Lives Matter for the Nobel Peace Prize may not be all that surprising. But this does not make it more palatable. 

 

It also highlights that the Nobel Committee, like many so-called news organisations who are in reality megaphones for political parties, define ‘peace’ based solely on political biases.

 

It clearly does not matter that multiple scientific studies, including from Washington State University, the City University of New York, Michigan State University, and a study led by Professor Roland Freyer, Jr, who is black, all found no evidence that US police shoot more black people than whites. In fact, adjusted for crime rates, the study from the City University of New York found that police actually are less likely to shoot black people than whites.

 

It again does not matter that the flash-fire cases of shootings of blacks that sparked the BLM movement are largely based on spiteful propaganda. For example, in 2013, Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer who shot the black teenager Trayvon Martin in a tussle, was reported as ‘white’ by the media, though his driver’s license and voter registration both show that he is Hispanic. NBC also maliciously edited his 911 call to make him sound more racist.

 

Michael Brown in 2014 did not shout ‘hands up, don’t shoot.’ He was shot as a consequence of going for the policeman’s gun after robbing a store. Yet people still held up ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ signs in 2020. 

 

In 2015, when Freddie Gray died from spinal injuries sustained from falling in the back of a police van while high on opiates and cannabinoids, three out of the six police officers involved in his arrest were black. They were subsequently charged with criminal negligence, misconduct, manslaughter and even second-degree murder. Furthermore, Baltimore, where the case happened, is majority non-white, the then chief of police and the majority of command staff were black, the mayor was black, and the attorney general was black.

 

In 2016, in Milwaukee, Sylville Smith was shot by a police officer while armed with a stolen gun and 500 rounds of ammunition. Body cam show that Smith was pointing the gun at the officers when they fired. The officer who shot Smith was himself black. Yet in all these cases, riots and lootings ensued, under the veneer of protesting against racism. These resulted in tens of millions worth of damage to a lot of black-owned businesses, egged on by a black man who happens to be the President of the country. And this is the foundation upon which BLM erected its banners.

 

All the incidence in the mid-2010’s were a warm up to the recent riots after George Floyd’s death, with majority black neighbourhoods, like the Bronx, left in tatters. Estimated cost from these riots go up to the billions, in a year already hit with a pandemic. More than 20 people have also died during the various riots.

Ferguson riots in 2014 after Brown's death

 

The Nobel committee clearly also does not care that BLM has consistently shown their viciousness by taking joy in stereotyping and humiliating white people, even those who are supporting their cause. They segregate by race, make white people kiss their shoes and wash their feet. The committee has probably also not read their manifesto (recently removed from their website), which included disruption of the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure. Their partner organization, the Movement for Black Lives, calls for abolishing all police and all prisons, as well as a radical change in tax codes resulting in a redistribution of wealth. BLM UK wants to rid of borders and dismantle capitalism. Anyone who think that is a recipe for peace is only rowing with one oar. The BLM movement is clearly insincere, unkind, philosophically hollow, and proven again and again to be dangerous.

 

The Nobel committee is only people, and it appears that they have drunk from the tainted spring of Woke. Therefore, judge not a prize, be it Nobel, Pulitzer, or Time Person of the Year, by its reputation, but judge its reputation by its actions.