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We will not dwell on the topical issue of the hubris involved in awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the very person who swears by his friendship with a New Hitler of Russia and his warm relationship with Israel’s war criminal. We have exhausted that subject. Our concern today lies elsewhere.
Taking the above dispute as a pretext, we wish to point out that this is not a diplomatic incident between Poland and the United States, as the Mitsotakis-fed website “Rapti and Associates” slyly instills into the minds of its empty-headed visitors. What we are witnessing is a confrontation between Trump and the Polish government.
Trump and Tusk are not America and Poland. Just as Erdoğan and Mitsotakis are not Turkey and Greece. And if half of America shudders at the mere mention of Trump’s name, in Greece, 80% of the people do not want to see Kyriakos Mitsotakis even in a drawing.
How a far-right figure—especially one of Donald Trump’s caliber—manages to become President of the United States, and how the Right-wing Kyriakos Mitsotakis, having now made a full 180-degree turn toward the far right, becomes Prime Minister of Greece, has long been recorded in the black pages of History. As has happened with countless of their counterparts before them. A popular will adulterated by a thousand methods, foremost among them demagoguery, populism, and every form of propaganda.
However, their ascent to seats of governmental power does not grant them the right to represent an entire nation. Much less to be identified with it. We should not forget that the constitutions and laws from which they derive such rights are drafted and voted by themselves, behind the backs of the people and the collective popular will. “John treats, John drinks”!
It is astonishing how even History itself cannot break free from such simplistic shackles—chief among them generalization. National and religious labels, in particular, function as tools for absolving leaders’ crimes, since these are indiscriminately attributed to the country and its people.
History, for example, attributes the great crime of Nazism to the German people. Today, the equally horrific crimes of the “New Hitler” are attributed to Russia and the Russians. The failure to personalize crime is one of History’s greatest errors—and it continues.
These simplifications, in the form of generalizations, are the primary cause of many forms of racism that lead to pogroms, ethno-religious cleansings, and genocides. Tragically, the burden also falls upon the “innocent of blood,” who had the misfortune of being identified—without their consent—through various -isms with the perpetrators of such crimes.

Diotima:

History does not punish only through events; it also punishes through words. And one of its gravest punishments is generalization. When crime is de-personalized, it ceases to be an act and becomes a “national trait.” It is precisely there that the perpetrator is absolved and the anonymous multitude is condemned.
Power has every interest in hiding behind flags. Not because it represents peoples, but because it fears standing alone before History. Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Erdoğan, Mitsotakis—these are not nations. They are individuals with names, political choices, and specific responsibilities. When these dissolve into abstract notions such as “America,” “Russia,” or “Israel,” crime disperses, becomes diluted, and ultimately laundered.
History has repeated this mistake countless times. Nazism was not “Germany,” just as Stalinism was not “the Russian people.” And yet generalizations proved convenient: they constructed collective guilt and allowed the real perpetrators to slip through the cracks of accountability.
This confusion is not innocent. It feeds racism, legitimizes vengeance, and prepares the ground for future pogroms. Above all, it strips peoples of the right to oppose their oppressors, to refuse identification with them, to avoid becoming hostages to a power that never asked their consent.
The restoration of History does not begin with peace prizes, but with something simpler and more radical:
calling things by their proper names.
Personalizing crime.
Separating peoples from their rulers.
Only then does memory become justice—and not an alibi.