Daily Times

“The best way” Oscar Wilde says “to avoid temptation is to yield to it” and one needs to be a saint or a radical to curb the temptation when the coveted trophy of Nobel Prize is in sight. In 1964, Sartre’s authenticity was challenged by this irresistible temptation yet true to his non-conformism he defied by declining the prize proving his critics that his ‘commitment was an act not a word’. “In discussing the motives of the Swedish Academy” he stated,”mention has been made of freedom, a word that suggests many interpretations. In the West, only a general freedom is meant: personally, I mean a more concrete freedom which consists of the right to have more than one pair of shoes and to eat one’s fill”.  “There could be more beautiful times” as he prophesied but that was certainly his.

Around one of the most lucrative prizes there lurks the shadows of a debatable murky history if not an absolutely detestable grisly one. The [peace-literature-economic] prize is apparently meant for those who integrate with the system and are best suited to play the role of its poster children. After all who could “have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition and reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” other than Adolf Hitler, Barak Obama, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Lech Walesa, Aung Suu Kyi, Menachem Begin, Solzhenitsyn, Kissinger and Milton Friedman, latter the closest associate of Pinochet. The names themselves speak volumes of the nominees’ credentials, their integrity and fondness for humanity, a unique similarity between the dissimilar.

Around one of the most lucrative prizes there lurks the shadows of a debatable murky history if not an absolutely detestable grisly one. Thepeace-literature-economic prize is apparently meant for those who integrate with the system and are best suited to play the role of its poster children

One of the recent prizes has gone to Nadia Murad, a young Yazidi girl from Iraq. An’axis of evil’ violated and destroyed by the Empire to gratify the greed of oil giants of the West, the Shell, Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum and Total. The same Iraq where 500000infants were starved and Madeline Albright in her imperialistic arrogance justified the price as worth paying.  One can merely wonder that after the massacre of this gigantic proportion what difference the life of Murad a single individual madetoconvulse the conscience of Nobel committee?

The objective of capital is to attract more of it; in this process human being becomes the evil necessity since, former cannot realize itself without some form of human labour. All labor products are meant for sale that includes the human misery.  After selling wars the face of a survivor too becomes merchandise best suited to fetch further profit.

The moment the Nobel Prize was bestowed upon Nadia Murad the accolade started pouring, her largely unfamiliar face caught the attention of international media whose only objective is to inflict the terror of capital on human mind while swindling the people and selling them as commodities. From the destruction of Middle East to the creation of ISIS to the genocide of Yizidi community everything is a commodity which in recent times necessitated a human face to be sold. The face would remain in the market till the people, horrified or dazed are prepared to buy the stuff; in the meanwhile a new scandal is successfully manufactured.

In this whole spectacle does anyone care to ask why the Middle East is on fire? Who brought this disaster on the beleaguered communities? Why the million march of refugee has started to undertake its terrible journey to Europe?  Due to their influx the sporadic individual crimes happening in civilized Europe are despicable albeit blown out of proportion but how about the insidious backing of Al-Nusra a terrorist/fascist organization and others of its ilk playing havoc in the Middle East and Ukraine is any less hideous and grisly?

What happened to Nadia and her community was the replica of what happened to the peaceful countries of the Middle East after the US invasion. The west wants the people to believe that mercenary groups akin to ISIS can be created from a void as they once made them chew the idea of Nazis’destructive Nihilism against the Jews without mentioning the liquidation of communists, gypsies and blacks.

Who can forget that once “Mussolini was the darling of the American press appearing in at least 150 articles from 1925-1932, most neutral, bemused or positive in tone…and Hitler was the German Mussolini… When the Chicago Daily News’ Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was becoming ‘an insane asylum’ in 1933, Allen Dulles, who eventually became director of the CIA”, snubbed “Mowrer”he was “then transferred out of Germany in fear of his life”[Conversation].

The US, Secretary of State Cordell Hull “apologized to the Nazi regime when a New York City judge acquitted protesters who tore a swastika flag off a German ship in New York Harbor in 1935. He apologized again in 1937, when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Hitler a “fanatic who is threatening the peace of the world.” Roosevelt even compelled Interior Secretary Harold Ickes to remove critical references to Hitler, Mussolini, and Nazism from a 1938 speech”.

Akin to Lord Action’s ‘bad- man theory’ the West wants the people to believe that the movements of hatred have no material basis, they appear from a thin air and can be forced to eclipse by using sheer firepower. Nothing can be grotesque than this premise and the West is fully aware of it. From Taliban to ISIS all terror based organizations have their basis in economic motives. Former was created to dent the Soviets hegemony; its defeat left the resources of socialist orbit to a massive plunder. Latter was the direct/indirect outcome of complete destruction of both Syria and Iraq and who can refuse the economic benefits gained by the Western corporations.

The idea is not to downplay the plight of Nadia and her community. The fact is that social passions of love or hate do not command the life of their own. Nothing is more determined than these movements of horror and hate. To augment them Holocaust and Hollywood invariably remain aligned together. After every Holocaust, Hollywood highlights the horrors of death and sells the hate; the ruse is to erase the terror of every day’s life under capitalism, though both are inextricably linked. Using the corpses and rape victims; hanging them in front of the people to muddy the truth is the worst kind of exploitation and debasement humanity has to suffer.

While refusing to accept the gilt-ridden prize Sartre went on to state “for 250,000 crowns,one cannot be asked… to renounce principles which are not only one’s own, but are shared by one’s all comrades… According to the Figaro littéraire article, [after accepting it] a controversial political past would not be held against me [but] I consider this controversial political past still valid…..[Hence] it seems to me less dangerous to decline the prize than to accept it.  I nonetheless hope, of course, that ‘the best man wins.’ That is, socialism”.

“The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life”, Sartre says “the clearer we could see through it”. Had he been still alive he could have easily discerned as he said the “smooth and smiling face’ of Nadia, and the ‘ruin in her eyes.”

The writer has authored books on socialism and history. He blogs at saulatnagi.wordpress.com and can be reached atsaulatnagi@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, October 20^th 2018.