HOW TO EARN A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

There is something curious about nationalism that infects us with a pair of internal blinkers and subconsciously limits our powers of reasoning. When the nationalist fervour is strongly burning inside of us, we are for the most part immune to our own logic. Logic is what we are calling it every time we take to social media to denounce the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Malala Yousafzai, the teenager from Pakistan who has campaigned so vociferously for women's right to education, labelling it Western propaganda in their bid to justify the murder of hundreds. This very logic flared up in 2009, too, when Barack Obama was awarded the same prize and we scratched our heads in confusion. Surely, the leader of the most militarily active country in the world was not deserving of an accolade for peace? But it was this logic which so unceremoniously deserted us in 2006, when the award went to our very own Muhammad Yunus and we decided to take it at face value, no questions asked about the agenda behind the award. Because it's entirely ludicrous to think of the Nobel Peace Committee as having agendas.

What parallels can be drawn between the three examples mentioned above? For one, they do not for a second challenge the pre-existing ideals of the Western world. Professor Yunus's approach of social businesses was radical enough to actually help emancipate people mired in extreme poverty and make a living but also 'safe' enough to not challenge the order of capitalism and big corporations acting as perpetual lenders to the poor. Barack Obama, obviously, as the 'Leader of the Free World' was the embodiment of social justice, no matter the fact that he was out waging war with millions. And in much the same way, Malala is the human face of Obama's war -- the little girl who represents all the little girls that are being saved from the fundamentalist oppression of the Taliban.

One part of that narrative is completely true -- women are oppressed in inhumane and ridiculous ways that deprive them of the basic rights of human beings, and fundamentalism needs to be eradicated. That Malala Yousafzai is a brave girl deserving of all the accolades she gets is also an undisputed fact. But it also says something about the kind of image the committee wants to project that she was selected over many other activists, in her field and others. And if you are to go back through the honour roll over the years then you will find the same glaring pattern of social workers, reformers, activists, innovators, politicians who have in no way challenged the fundamental pillars of Western imperialism. The idea that the West is the best and everyone is simply channelling their ethos has always been intact.

This is not to say, however, that being in synchrony with the West undermines the work that these people have done in any way. It is a critique of the system that consciously overlooks the likes of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange for they are threats to the kind of imperialist democracy that the West and America in particular are trying to export. They will not be recognized for their work. The simple fact that the Nobel Peace Committee decides to 'play it safe' and not ruffle any capitalist feathers makes the value of the Peace Prize null and void. There is no real reason to place much weight in an award that is intended only for furthering propaganda. If anything, there is every reason to denounce it as a failed creation of colonialist thought and it does the Malalas and the Dalai Lamas of the world wrong to be tainted by its lustre (and, of course, to be in the presence of people like Obama and Suu Kyi who are implicit in the massacre of countless innocent lives). And so let the measuring scales be reversed from now on. If you don't get to win the Nobel Peace Prize in your lifetime know that you haven't exactly missed out on much. It also means that you might have stood up against Western corporatocracy, in which case, it's actually a good thing you haven't been acknowledged as bringing 'peace' to the world.