When Power Mocks Peace: A Lament for Truth and Justice

What is the message to the world’s youth, the disheartened, the hopeful? The youth, observing this theater of the absurd, may ask: “What’s the point of integrity if infamy gets the applause?” Let us not pretend this is harmless spectacle. This slow poisoning of merit has real consequences: cynicism becomes contagious; democracies begin to rot from indifference and the people most in need of hope and justice are told, loudly, that both are for sale.

We live in a civilization where virtue is not practiced as a value, rather displayed as a costume. Public statements about war crimes and peace prize nominations, previously seen as prestigious, are now considered parts of broader geopolitical strategies. We lionize peace while subsidizing injustice and violence. We imprison whistleblowers and decorate war architects. Here, symbolism clearly overtakes substance.

The Nobel Peace Prize becomes less a beacon of hope and more a circus trophy handed to whoever best plays the part, regardless of past roguish behaviors. By rewriting the narrative, society forgets who did what, and worse, who suffered. A clear case of historical amnesia. The world begins to laugh not with the West, but at it, and with every nomination like this, we contribute to our own intellectual and moral decay.

Let us not ask what kind of civilization allows this. Let us ask: what kind of civilization celebrates it? Because that is what happening now right before our eyes. The cameras flash. The pundits preach. The institutions nod and sip tea, content that history has become so soft-focus it now looks like a luxury product campaign. In this civilization war is defense, injustice is sovereignty, peace is whatever the powerful say. Perhaps it is time to introduce a new category of an award: The Post-Ironic Peace Prize, bestowed upon the individual who most masterfully transforms hypocrisy into a diplomatic virtue, who wages war with one hand and waves an olive branch with the other, all while keeping a straight face. But all is not lost. Still, the voices of the principled and the learned refuse to be silenced, standing firm against the erosion of truth and the burial of justice. They are the relentless guardians of conscience, like the scholars who defied Holocaust denial, the human rights lawyers who exposed apartheid’s brutalities, or the historians who challenge Türkiye’s denial of the Armenian Genocide.

What remains when justice is mocked, and memory erased? We descend into a civilization of sarcasm, where lies wear medals, where the absurd is applauded, and where history becomes a grotesque theater. Justice, though silenced for a time, is never truly defeated. It may be buried under propaganda, mocked by power, and delayed by corruption, but it does not die. It waits, it gathers strength in the hearts of the outraged, the grieving, the courageous. Across history, tyrants have fallen, empires have crumbled, and the lies of the powerful have been laid bare. What endures is the unyielding human spirit, the voices of the oppressed, the resilience of truth, and the quiet courage of those who refuse to look away. For example, in 2021, the United States formally recognized the Armenian Genocide as “genocide,” after more than a century of denial thanks to the advocacy, historical scholarship, and survivor testimony. Although it did not reverse the loss, it however, acknowledged the reality.

Despite the challenging conditions created by those in authority, there is hope that the nomination will not be honored and disgrace will be avoided. However, if the unthinkable happens, we risk turning moral authority into an outsourced, hollowed-out brand traded like offshore manufacturing or waved through by spineless ethics committees. The Nobel Committee may well slide into becoming a global reputation launderette, scrubbing the blood off tyrants and war criminals until they gleam enough for a Netflix redemption arc. We have seen it before: remember Henry Kissinger’s award amid the wreckage of Cambodia and Vietnam, and Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence in the face of genocide, even the EU lauded, while refugees drowned at its gates. Each time, the prize did not just falter it cracked faith in the very idea that justice, though slow, can outlast the brute force of power. If the committee caves, it will not be awarding peace it will be burying it under an inscription of hypocrisy.

(The author is Professor Emeritus of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is the author of the book with Yair Auron: Perfect Injustice. Genocide and the Theft of Armenian Wealth, Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University, NJ 2009.)