The Norwegian Nobel Committee has chosen Venezuela’s far-right opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, as the recipient of its 2025 Peace Prize, an event that carries both great significance and disturbing implications.
The announcement was made on October 10 in Oslo, Norway—a nation whose wealth, NATO role, and substantial military spending mark it as a stronghold for imperialist agendas in Europe and beyond.
This decision starkly exposes the duplicity of capitalist public opinion, which is being rallied in support of yet another disastrous imperialist intervention in Latin America.
Granting the peace prize to far-right or violent figures is hardly novel. As American satirist and mathematician Tom Lehrer remarked in 1973, “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” Machado’s accolade only deepens this grim legacy.
Previously, the prize has been given to mass murderers and war criminals such as Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, infamous for the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and Aung San Suu Kyi, whose regime orchestrated genocidal acts against Myanmar’s Rohingya. Barack Obama received the award in 2009, just before escalating military operations in Afghanistan and expanding drone strikes. In these instances, the Peace Prize was less a tribute to peacemakers than a political tool endorsing imperialist wars.
Donald Trump’s supporters expressed bitterness over the Nobel Committee’s failure to recognize him, with the White House claiming the committee “proved they place politics over peace,” praising Trump for possessing “the heart of a humanitarian.”
However, Trump’s record of supporting the Gaza genocide, bombings of Iranian nuclear sites, and killing unarmed civilians near the Caribbean coast was too much even for the Nobel committee. Unable to honor Trump, they instead selected one of his close associates in Maria Corina Machado.
After the announcement, Trump appeared to accept the verdict, retweeting Machado’s statement: “We are on the threshold of victory and today more than ever we count on President Trump…”
The Nobel Committee lauded Machado as “a brave and committed champion of peace… a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.” Curiously, AI detection software ZeroGPT suggests much of this praise was lifted word-for-word from ChatGPT.
Machado has served as a US-backed regime-change operative for almost 25 years. In April 2002, she rushed to Caracas’ Miraflores presidential palace to support the military-business coup attempt against Venezuela’s elected leader Hugo Chavez, endorsing the notorious Carmona Decree.
Following this, Machado founded the NGO Súmate to coordinate violent, US-funded destabilization campaigns financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization succeeding the CIA’s political interference efforts.
This so-called advocate for a “peaceful transition to democracy” openly praises US military aggression and collaborates with Washington on plans to brutally suppress opposition after regime change.
As the New York Times reported recently, “The group supporting the use of force is led by Maria Corina Machado.” The Times further notes: “One of Ms. Machado’s advisers, Pedro Urruchurtu, said she was coordinating with the Trump administration and had a plan for the first 100 hours after Mr. Maduro’s fall. That plan involves the participation of international allies, he said, ‘especially the United States.’” Those initial hours could mirror the violent aftermaths of the 1973 Chilean and 1976 Argentine coups.
At minimum, awarding Machado signals support from influential European elites for a regime-change war that risks igniting a new front in a developing third world war. France’s embattled “president of the rich,” Emmanuel Macron, as a representative of the transatlantic establishment, hailed Machado as a “fighter for liberation.” A blatant farce.
The Nobel Committee’s statement laments global trends like “the rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation,” yet conspicuously omits the Trump administration—Machado’s backer and controller—as the foremost example of this trend.
Recently, Machado appeared on Fox News endorsing the US military buildup in the Caribbean and extrajudicial killings of fishermen accused—without proof—of cartel ties linked to Maduro.
“I want to tell how grateful we are to President Trump and the administration for addressing the tragedy that Venezuela is going through,” she declared. “Maduro has turned Venezuela into the biggest threat to the national security of the US and the stability of the region.”
The Pentagon has sunk at least five small vessels, killing 21 civilians in the southern Caribbean, while amassing a large naval fleet, fighter jets, and 4,500 troops near Venezuela’s coast. These represent the first overt US military actions in Latin America since the 1989 invasion of Panama, which resulted in hundreds or thousands of civilian deaths under the pretext of drug trafficking charges against the former dictator Manuel Noriega.
Last week, the White House notified Congress of a “non-international armed conflict” with a shadowy list of alleged drug cartels—effectively an unlawful declaration of war on all people across the hemisphere, particularly the working class in the US.
Beyond endorsing imperialist interference, elevating Machado’s fascist background—similar to the acclaim granted to Argentina’s fascist president Javier Milei—reflects approval by “respectable” global oligarchs for reinstating the terror regimes imposed by US-backed dictatorships throughout Latin America during the 20th century’s latter half.
Together with leaders like Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Milei, Machado is a signer of the “Madrid Forum” charter launched by Spain’s fascist VOX party, maintaining close ties with Germany’s AfD among her chief allies.
Machado champions “free market” policies, particularly advocating privatization of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA—a publicly owned entity supported by various bourgeois parties since the 1970s. She has backed Milei’s “shock therapy” economic agenda, which essentially means freeing corporations to slash social programs and exploit workers without restraint.
Descended from a Venezuelan oligarchic family, her far-right platform is fueled by animosity towards the working class and any challenges to social inequality. She has supported the crippling US sanctions that by 2020 were linked to roughly 100,000 excess deaths and forced millions into exile. Moreover, Machado has remained silent on the Trump administration’s harsh anti-immigrant measures that targeted hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans seeking refuge in the US.
Repeatedly, she has called on the Venezuelan military as the ultimate political authority, making it clear that any government she leads would be a military dictatorship from the outset, dedicated to crushing opposition to her deeply unpopular social and economic agenda.
The key question raised by Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize is which social forces and programs can effectively counter the growing threats of fascism and war.
Venezuela’s nationalist governments under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro implemented limited nationalizations and social welfare policies while seeking better conditions from US imperialism.
However, aided by Stalinist, Social Democratic, and Pabloite supporters, these regimes fostered illusions that durable social and democratic progress could be won by opposing imperialism on nationalist terms without dismantling capitalism.
As seen in Chile with the 1973 Pinochet coup against left-nationalist President Salvador Allende, and elsewhere, such illusions only politically and physically disarmed the working class, paving the way for fascist repression by ruling elites.
It is essential to expose the propaganda cloaked in claims of “democracy” and “human rights” to reveal the harsh reality of bourgeois politics. The working class must reject the cynical manipulation of the Nobel Prize to sanctify imperialist reaction.
Only a united front of Venezuelan workers, together with their counterparts across Latin America, the United States, and globally—guided by a socialist and revolutionary vision—can halt the advance toward world war and fascist dictatorship, opening the path to authentic peace, democracy, and social justice.
The imperialist anointment of Machado serves foremost as a stark warning: ruling elites are preparing even greater crimes worldwide. The solution lies in the independent mobilization of the international working class, aware of its strength and historic responsibilities.
Original article: www.wsws.org
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