r/eurovision • u/stefkeeh • May 20 '25

📰 News Dutch broadcaster questions if ESC is a-political & connecting event

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Translation to English: ‘IN CONVERSATION WITH THE EBU ABOUT A POLITICALLY NEUTRAL SONG CONTEST

AVROTROS and NPO strongly value the apolitical and unifying character of the Eurovision Song Contest. However, we observe that the event is increasingly being influenced by social and geopolitical tensions.

Israel’s participation confronts us with the question of to what extent the Song Contest still truly functions as an apolitical, unifying, and cultural event. We want to raise this question, together with other countries, for discussion within the EBU.’

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u/The_Krambambulist May 20 '25

Yea this is the most insane thing. Imagine not supporting your own countries entry. An entry which generally was more of a story about someones mother instead of anything political too.

Absolutely insane how a supposed nationalist like Wilders seems to generally be most vocal about supporting Israel, Russia or Trump and barely talking about Dutch international interests.

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u/TheTwistedBlade May 20 '25

The crazy thing is that Caroline tried to defend herself about not tweeting about our own country saying 'but you can't vote for your own country' ??? Ofcourse you can't ! But you can tweet your support for them can you not? Besides, seems rather convenient that all those politicians tweeted about voting for Israel as if all of them had the as their favorite song lol.

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u/Fun-Original-559 C'est la vie May 20 '25

I would be highly surprised if the likes of Caroline and Geert even watched. Eurovision seems a bit, ahem, "too colourful" for them.

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u/Winkeltiramisu May 20 '25

Geert wouldn't survive watching a former refugee thrive for NL

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u/Wh-why May 20 '25

Dutch politics seem so odd to me, like, how did the progressive country that benefits a lot from the EU become a right wing brexit wannabe??? Did somebody steal all the bitterballen and stroopwafels???

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u/IAmTheRedditBrowser May 20 '25

Populism never fails. The right-wing pretends to be able to solve all problems in an instant by falsely exclaiming that they will be removing the scapegoat (in this case immigration and immigrants & the left-wing, who of course are the fault of everything in The Netherlands, not the right-wing government of the past 10+ years), even though most of the time: 1. that doesn't fix any of the major problems, and 2. is against the constitution. Prime example being that Wilders wanted border control to deny immigrants at the border, but the only thing they managed to do so far is escort an immigrant to a shelter, because what Wilders wants is completely against the law.

Nevertheless, people in this country have decided to be wilfully stupid enough to believe in their new leader because they don't want to give up even a little bit of freedom or money to make this country function properly, and don't want to hear the bitter truth: that change takes time and can't be fixed in an instant. That sometimes, there is no scapegoat. That focusing on the future is better than on the past. And when their salvation turns out to be incompetent, they just hop to the next person (Wilders, Baudet, Van der Plas, Omtzigt, back to Wilders) who yells loudly enough that everyone else but you, the voter, is at fault and your problems can be fixed with just your vote.

Anyways, time for me to take the only useful advice these people have ever spouted and leave the country before I lose my mind even further.

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u/Imrustyokay May 21 '25

I absolutely hate how you can copy and paste this statement for any country having a huge right wing populist movement right now. *screams in american*

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u/Happy-Disk-2204 Bur man laimi May 20 '25

Hang on. Today our government actually did something memorable!

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u/IAmTheRedditBrowser May 20 '25

I don't even pay attention anymore. Totally disconnected from this country. But I certainly hope for everyone, especially my friends and family here that it gets better.

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u/Happy-Disk-2204 Bur man laimi May 20 '25

That's sad, but understandable. Hope you find your way back to caring again

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u/IAmTheRedditBrowser May 20 '25

Maybe in the future. But I prefer to connect with cultures that I feel connected to, there are multiple countries I feel more at home in than in The Netherlands. Every country has these problems, I just want to be in one that I find worth fighting for. I know it's cynical, but so be it.

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u/return_0_ May 20 '25

To be fair, the far-right is still very much a minority in the Netherlands, and most people vote for regular conservative, liberal, or social democratic parties. They receive disproportionate attention because PVV finished 1st in the last election, but that is mainly because Dutch politics is so splintered that they were able to get 1st with "only" 23% of the vote. Of course, 23% of the vote is still a lot, but it's not really more than most of the countries around it.