It’s been a strange week in Malmö for the Eurovision.
Given Israel’s membership of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and their continued participation in a contest being staged in an unusually diverse bit of Sweden, there’s a heavy Police presence, protests have been popping up all over the city, and the Øresund bridge – a vital link to Copenhahen and therefore much of the contest’s hotel capacity this year – has been blocked a number of times by those expressing Palestinian solidarity.
The EBU – itself and its signature event partly exercises in pro-Western propaganda in the aftermath of the second world war – has found the year particularly difficult to navigate.
Its simplistic insistence that the contest is not “political” – an exercise in attempted and studied political neutrality – has always been true and not true, depending on your perspective.
True insofar as Wogan-era conspiracies about cheating Eastern Europeans rigging the contest merely by entering the small independent states that emerged from the edges of Russia and the collapse of Yugoslavia was always just lazy racism – expressions of similar cultures voting for music from similar cultures.
False insofar as an event that explicitly platforms the culture of countries – and then retains a gruelling voting sequence in which countries give points to other countries – is hardly going to escape the fact that while institutions might attempt neutrality, the public and participants will always reserve the right to be less careful about their judgements, and more conspiratorial about the results.
Of course I can see parallels between Eurovision and both universities and students unions – because the former is my hobby and the latter is my work. I expect that if my hobby was motor racing and my work was electrical engineering, there’s probably a series of blogs on that too.
But I do think there’s things to learn from a week where joy has been in unusually short supply, and where feelings of betrayal among those who follow the event are visceral and real.
These are people – largely LGBT+ – whose participation has gone from being banned, to tolerated, to appropriated by broadcasters whose funders and political masters were always a bit more conservative than them.
But they were over-promised. It was never “theirs”. Just as students learn that however diverse and welcoming their university is, it’s always also an agent of a state desperate to project values onto the young rather than respond to them.
Caught between the two, it’s how organisations like the EBU and universities respond that matters.
United by music
Out of the back of last year’s successful hosting by Liverpool and the BBC, so taken with the atmosphere in the air were the EBU that the year’s slogan – “United by Music” – was converted into a permanent insignia for the event.
The slogans have tended to be just as meaningless as those decals that people put up around campus telling students that they belong there – but at least the EBU previously had the option of dialling down the unity message if needs warranted.
Then came October 7th. Israel’s first go at an entry was called “October Rain” – a title and whose lyrics ran dangerously close to making an overtly political point about war. To the extent to which the EBU has rules that can be consistently applied, it was told to try again.
Many assumed that this was Israel and the EBU’s attempt at gently causing Israel’s withdrawal this year – but the story goes that the Israeli government stepped in and got the title rewritten as “Hurricane”.
Maybe it was naivety on the part of both fans and the EBU that it could pull off a stunt so similar to that which caused Russia’s withdrawal a few years ago – like when a minister leaves post, when we’re able to believe both that they were expelled and that they chose to walk away, depending on your perspective.
But it didn’t work. I suspect precisely because participation in the Eurovision, an explicitly Western project – coupled with a deep historical need to fight against calls to eradicate and erase Israel (and so by association its people) – became something that it was important for the country to protect.
And as a result, for the largely young and frequently marginalised fans of the event, Israel’s participation became something that it was crucial to campaign against – because for them, the platforming of a country they see as the oppressor in a conflict which has taken the lives of tens of thousands of innocents is an unforgivable act of betrayal.
It’s why a huge protest outside of the Israeli artist’s hotel room this week can be read in two ways. On the one hand, even though it’s just a silly song contest, people are representing their country. And so of course a lot of people in Malmo are going to protest its representative coming.
On the other hand it’s hard to not also look at it and think that it feels like mass bullying of a young woman who just wants to sing a song with vague hints of the way people feel about the conflict in her country – like so many previous artists have been able to do.
It’s all his fault
A particular aspect of the week and the long build up has been condemning the EBU and its leadership. But for me doing so partly misses the point. The EBU is an association that is funded mainly by pro-Israel, Western powers’ state broadcasters.
And so what I continue to find depressing in some ways – and this is the link back to the day job – is both sides’ appeal to authority to side with them, rather than trying to change others’ minds.
I can see the problem. The lack of leadership amongst the decentralised young can feel frustrating and alien to those whose own youth saw “politics” conducted by rules and debate and leaders who could call off their own side. But what else are the “woke mob” supposed to do?
More generally though, this is of course what happens when any organisation – especially one that bleats on about democracy and freedom and diversity – drinks its own values koolaid. Especially when you realise that “values” are, of course, political.
For many fans, the betrayal is real – partly because the contest has come to represent a space where some (although when it comes to ethnicity, notably not all) oppressed people aren’t just visible, it’s that they win for a change. It’s the ultimate underdog show.
And so for those who see what’s happening in Palestine as an unforgivable exercise in oppression, the idea that the state broadcaster can do what every country does – project itself onto a wider stage positively – feels like an invasion.
But as I said above, for Israel the idea that it will allow itself to be in this case symbolically eradicated – or that an association whose members are state broadcasters would allow that – was always for the birds.
What the EBU is learning – very much the hard way in this case – is that “consistency” of application of rules that emerge from supposedly universal values isn’t possible or meaningful in the real world. Because members of its community reserve the right to be inconsistent.
And again in a link back to the day job, the problem of making promises of both protection from oppression and freedom to participate when they’re not actually compatible for many people is especially painful here.
Back on campuses – which are just as removed from the realities of the conflict as the silly song contest in Malmö – it’s perfectly possible to understand the feelings of intimidation emerging from a Jewish student population that is largely supportive of Israel’s cause.
It’s also perfectly possible to see why a much more diverse – and if we’re honest, much less “white and western” student body – might also feel that the promises they were made about university being “a place for them” don’t feel like it.
Especially when a handful of nasties on the march you organised slip beyond criticism of Israel and into antisemitism – provoking the inevitable rolling back of the rhetoric on uncomfortable speech that you’ve had chucked at you for the last few years.
No platform
I’m fatally compromised on the question of boycotts. I can see the case for having rules that prevent people having to fight for someone’s removal democratically. And I can see how their application can appear to be profoundly undemocratic and unfair.
But I can also see how it’s easier, in a social media age, to find others like you, band together, and call for the other side to be called off.
It’s why I think the comparisons that some draw with the boycott movement that accompanied campaigns against apartheid to be faulty.
Because once you enlarge and become a community that includes difference – rather than one of homogeneity that merely calls for that inclusion – you create different factors. You create a responsibility towards those with whom you disagree.
Holding communities together like that can be fiendishly difficult, but the relentless focus on both the right to safety and the right to speak deprioritises the responsibility to listen to, understand and reason with others.
Even the contrast between rights and responsibilities conjures up chapters of university policies that in the case of the former describe student liberation and university authoritarianism respectively.
What about the right to be heard, and to have your fears understood?
The miss-step that did it for me this week was the appearance of Eric Saade, a two-time Swedish entrant born in Kattarp, a small village in Helsingborg – whose father was a Palestinian from Lebanon.
He’d looked and sounded like someone that was likely to join the list of Swedish artists boycotting the contest in the run up – and took a big risk (and a fan hit) when he announced that he’d be doing the opening on Tuesday night.
When he did so, he wore the Keffiyeh — a Palestinian shawl — around his wrist.
Last month on Insta, he’d given producers (and fans) a clue:
When you can no longer wear a symbol of your ethnicity in our so-called “free world” it’s even more important for me to participate.
But his performance was cut from YouTube. Ebba Adielsson, executive producer of the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, said:
Eric Saade is well aware of the rules that apply when standing on the Eurovision Song Contest stage. We think it’s sad that he’s used his participation in this way.
Later on Instagram, Saade responded:
This was just my way of showing a part of my origin, which is important in a world like this. I got that keffiyeh from my dad when I was a little boy, to never forget where the family comes from. Back then, I didn’t know one day be called a ‘political symbol’ by EBU. It’s like calling the “Swedish Dola Horse” a political symbol… In my eyes, it’s just racism.
I just wanted to be inclusive and wear something that is authentic to me – but the EBU seems to think my ethnicity is controversial. It says nothing about me, but everything about them. I’ll stick to this year’s ESC slogan: United By Music!
Is the waving of a Palestinian flag, or using a contrasted phrase, an act of antisemitism or an expression of identity? Is it a microaggression whose repeated usage amounts to racism, or is the banning those sorts of expressions a form of racism in and of itself?
I don’t know. But I do think that editing has been counterproductive. And I have no doubt that repaying Eric’s bravery by taking part rather than boycotting by telling him he can’t wear a scarf from his dad at a contest that’s supposed to be about a celebration of diversity is almost certainly an example of where “consistently” applying the rules just makes you look oppressive.
What I’m sure of is that Martin Österdahl (the EBU’s Eurovision boss) and his simultaneous insistence that the contest isn’t political when it self-evidently is – and when the EBU’s own version of freedom, diversity and tolerance don’t match up the actions of its officials – is just as unhelpful and problematic as Arif Ahmed’s insistence that his own appointment and particular project to change the values and culture on campus is somehow apolitical.
He also doesn’t sound or look like someone who’s listening. At least to anyone other than his funders.
I will go to the final, and security concerns aside, I’ll immerse in its joy and its controlled, formatted version of diversity makes me feel better. But when I get home, I’ll need to remind myself that listening as hard as I can – to what the songs, the artists and those that surround the contest say – is where the real learning and progress is made.
That’s true on campus too.
