Shortly after the Second World War, European nations decided that their only fields of future confrontation should be culture and sports. They thus established, among other things, a song contest called Eurovision.
I watched it last weekend. Forget music, forget song. Now it is just cultural and political polemics.
The song contest used to be a good time. It was based on the Italian national song contest at Sanremo, founded in 1951. The Italians served up beautiful women in beautiful clothes, handsome men, lots of brilliant singing.
Eurovision started that way. But now, seven decades later, all of that is gone – there are few glamorous women and dashing men singing sparkling songs.
This year’s Eurovision song contest was a disaster. Although it is supposed to be a non-political affair, deep rifts that torment today’s Europe manifested themselves in the process, causing controversy and derision.
To begin with, artistic meritocracy has been defenestrated. Eurovision was once about songs, now it has become mostly a show contest. It has become a selling platform for the radical progressive agenda. Namely, what usually wins the prize is adherence to the multicultural and LGBTQ+ causes.
The gender agenda has dominated the contest during the last two decades. Beautiful female artists were first side-lined by gay contestants. When eventually gay acts became the norm, transexuals took the lead. And this year, genders were abolished altogether, as the non-binary invasion took place.
(Information point for those still informed by the 1950s Sanremo dream: whereas a gay person, or even a transexual, accepts that genders do exist, either by affirming attraction to the same sex, or by transitioning from one gender to another, a non-binary person rejects the fundamental distinction between male and female.)
There were two non-binary entries in the 2024 Eurovision contest in Sweden. One of them won it with a song that was not the best among 37 entries.
The other one received high marks from the national jury committees, although its song was truly horrid – a hymn to Satan, therefore deeply insulting to Christians, which did not at all bother the European Broadcasting Union.
Committees of national broadcasting corporations give contestants half the total points, while the other half is awarded through televoting. The broadcasting executives’ decisions this year were in stark contrast to the popular vote. In fact, the executives very much resembled typical European ruling elites who champion causes against what most people want.
As for politics, it is difficult to avoid, even in a contest that says that it is adamant about not being political. The popular vote gave top marks to both Israel and Ukraine. The Dutch entry was disqualified, and several other countries hovered on the brink of quitting over reactions to the Gaza war. Russia and Belarus were banned a priori.
And is the gender agenda not political? It is more than obvious that radical liberalism and progressive ideas form the backbone of the Eurovision song contest’s aesthetic and moral approach to things. Inclusion, tolerance, migration and diversity have long been established as political notions.
So let us not be hypocritical. Eurovision is not only political, but it has nowadays become militantly biased. As an avant-garde launchpad of future trends, it tries to indoctrinate hundreds of millions of viewers.
Do we need such an institution? On the one hand, it is good that most countries of the old continent meet up once a year united by music. And surely, as a huge event, Eurovision is one of those things that cultivate a sense of European identity for the masses.
On the other hand, the contest should seriously consider changing its tune. It is not supposed, after all, to beat the drum for anything. A return to an event which puts singing back at the centre of attention would be music to our ears.
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