Another victim of the Western woke craze, Hungarian Kossuth Prize-winning writer Péter Nádas, has been stripped of a prestigious literary award because of his skin colour and gender. The seven-member jury of the Berlin-based organization Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) decided to give the the International Prize for Literature, awarded annually, to a Barbadian woman, apparently on purely political grounds. The jury stated that Nádas is a ‘white male’ and therefore should not be awarded the prize.

At least according to an article in Die Zeit penned by two members of the jury, Juliana Liebert and Ronya Ottham, this is what happened behind the scenes. It is also important to note that the prize of €35,000 is awarded to a work of contemporary international literature and its first German translation, with the author receiving €20,000 and the translator €15,000. So the incident is not ‘just’ about basic human rights; a significant amount of money was also at stake.

According to the article reviewed by Mandiner, even before Nádas’s case, the jury had awarded more or fewer points to writers simply because of their skin colour or gender. After several changes in the ranking, it eventually turned out that Péter Nádas’s Horror Stories—previously described by the jury as a ‘masterpiece’—was pitted against Cherie Jones’s book, which had been described by some as ‘rape porn’ and ‘Netflix-style.’

According to the article, one of the main arguments that arose in the debate was that while Nádas is the better author, he is a successful white male writer, so Cherie Jones should be given preference. One of the authors of the Die Zeit article tried to argue during the debate that it is the works that count, so Nádas should get more points. She was told: ‘No need to get personal!

As a white woman, you have nothing to say here anyway!’

The two authors commented: ‘We no longer felt like members of a jury, but literary functionaries.’

After the article was published, the two jury members were summoned by the director of HKW, where they were told that events had not happened as they described it. However, the two stood by their account, affirming that they could not support a decision that was purportedly literary but was, in fact, political.

Some commentators have described the incident as pure racism; others say it is another example of the woke craze ravaging the West. One thing is certain: the case of Péter Nádas perfectly illustrates the state of the progressive-driven world of our time. It is not surprising that this case has provoked outrage among publicists, mainly on the right, which is interesting, given that Nádas cannot be considered a right-winger by any stretch of the imagination.

Zoltán Hegyi, a publicist for Magyar Nemzet, has called the case ordinary racism and noted the absence of outrage from the defenders of rights who would be so vocal if the victim of discrimination were a woman of colour. Hegyi describes the woke ideology as totalitarian, intolerant, and racist. He quotes American author—and our regular contributor—Rod Dreher: ‘It is a form of illiberal left politics that has identity—especially race, sexuality, and gender identity—at its core and divides the world into oppressors—i.e. whites, heterosexuals, Christians—and oppressed—i.e. non-whites, LGBTQ people, non-Christians.’

Left-leaning liberal publicist Róbert Puzsér has labelled the jury’s decision a terrible nightmare and a clear dead end for our civilization.

Cases such as this are not new; they started in the United States but are becoming more and more common in Europe (mainly in the West, but also increasingly in the East). This includes—although the two cases are slightly different—the progressive attempt to block the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels and the exclusion of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID) political groups from the European electoral debate. Just as in the Brussels institutions, the ranks of the global cultural elite have been filled in recent years with left-wing progressives who blindly erase anything of traditional or cultural value.

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