The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) says the Eurovision Song Contest isn’t political, and argues that Russia’s ban in 2022 was “fundamentally different”.
It’s the second time politics has dominated Eurovision,
Okay, this author has not been following Eurovision for very long then. Here are some that come to mind:
- 1964: Stage invader protested against Spain’s and Portugal’s dictatorships
- 1969: Organised by Spain
- 1973: Israel debuts
- 1977: BBC cameramen stike right before the contest
- 1978: Israel wins
- 1990s: Yugoslav Wars and dissolution of Soviet Union, with some countries participating while at war
- 1998: Israel wins, with a trans performer
- 2003: Invasion of Iraq, UK was allowed to participate but got last place
- 2009: Azerbaijani government interrogates people who voted for Armenia, Georgian entry is anti-Putin
- 2012: Organised by Azerbaijan
- 2014: Start of Russo-Ukrainian war
- 2016: Ukraine wins over televote favourite Russia
- 2019: Organised by Israel
- 2021: Belarusian entry being government propaganda
- 2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine
Eurovision has always been political.
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According to Ukrainian sources a little over 500 children were killed since the beginning of Russian invasion (which was about 2 years ago). And just since October 7th over 10.000 children were killed in Gaza. So yeah. They are “fundamentally different”. It’s just brown kids dying in Gaza so it’s ok.
The difference is that Western media didn’t question a single thing the IDF said, even as the lies were caught in 4k.
Honest question: is Israel considered a European state?
Eurovision is put on by the European Broadcaster Union, an organization that extends well beyond Europe itself, including Algeria, Azerbaijan, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Egypt, Georgia, Armenia, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, and Turkey. The Arab states have generally not participated as a protest of Israel (and because it’s very gay), but they are full members and are completely eligible to participate if they ever wanted to.
Gotcha, I assumed it was for European countries only based on the name alone.
You’d never know it today, but “Eurovision” as a term was originally coined to refer to the new broadcasting network capable of pushing the same feed to multiple counties’ own networks simultaneously. That is to say, it’s fully called the Eurovision Song Contest, because it’s a song contest that’s broadcast on the Eurovision network. The network is actually still used for a lot of stuff today, particularly live sports.
