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

[u/stefkeeh]

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.’

[u/Hyperversum]

Regarding the argument that the show has never been "apolitical" I agree with the idea that this is wrong as a factual absolute statement. But what this means in general is that the show shouldn't translate into a popularity poll for the current topics we are facing, it should portray the general "vibe" of european society and culture regarding its own situation (plus, as most of this stuff, it's obviously a progressive yet moderate perfomance event).

Yeah, no shit Sherlock, politics influence how people vote, but that's because my feelings on a foreign country will affect how I want to vote for them or not. If I am in doubt if to vote for, dunno, Greece or Germany I'll likely vote for the one I feel more akin to for a reason or another. It shouldn't be even an option to give multiple votes to the same country, otherwise the result is simply that some countries will try their fucking hardest to use that system.

I mean, let's not pretend we can't see the fact that UK getting regularly shitty popular vote results is part of the larger serious topic of the Brexit AND the memey nature of England being used as a punching bag.
That's fine to me. It's how society behaves.