#because if they want to be part of the imperialism PR campaign then they frankly have to live with some people being mean to them about it

[zevranunderstander]

No offense, but "colonialist and imperialist festival that is trying to rebrand colonizers into quirky modern nations" is one of the most ignorant definition of Eurovision I've ever seen. The contest was born in the early 50's literally to put Europe together after WWII. And believe me, neither then, nor now the organizers give a fuck about colonialism, also because EBU is made of 56 country and only a small fraction of them were colonizers. On the other hand many were colonized.

So far it's also one of the very few occasions in EU where queer artists can express themselves. We all agree Israel shouldn't be allowed to partecipate, though, and that the jury's vote should be abolished. As for the public, this year their vote has been a mess as well, but for the first time it was open to the whole world so this may be part of the problem.

Your post is also insulting to many of the artists, btw.

the ESC was NOT put together to reunite europe after WW2, this sentiment is not once stated in the first ESC or any of the following ESCs and is literally just a narrative told today to make it seem more heartfelt, there is a really good video on it that by verilybitchie, that goes into much more detail about this than i will right now: link. but generally the first ESC was also just a money making concept: the EBU had this whole new platform they needed to have content for, and hosting a "non-political" song contest was a really lucrative idea. also for a long time, eastern europe for example was excluded from the ESC, because the west didnt like the communism going on there. the video is really good if you are genuinely interested in the previous "brandings" and politics of the ESC and is like, 40 minutes long, so i will not rehash everything said in there.

"neither then, nor now the organizers give a fuck about colonialism", yeah, obviously they don't otherwise they wouldn't allow Israel or Azerbaijan to have a platform in this contest. a lot of these countries aren't just "former colonists" they are still actively colonizing or completely suppressing human rights in their country. they do not care about colonialism because Israel for example can offer tons and tons of money so that they are in the contest and that's way more lucrative than "doing the right thing" and not having colonialist superpowers in a song contest that are currently actively waging wars. i am not saying "the EBU does colonialism", i am saying "the EBU let's a bunch of colonialists do funny acts where they can show off queer people in their country so that they can gain sympathies as a progressive country because they get a lot of money from the people participating and it's also giving them a whole new country as a market for the event night". do you know how lucrative it is for a country to host, because they can completely re-brand themselves as a popular tourist destination?

also, they did only ban russia after 6 countries appealed for them to do so and threatened to drop out, so they truly don't care about colonialism and only how to serve the biggest market available. but the narrative of a country persevering in the face of war is so inspirational, no? so this year you could have almost mistaken all of their branding to be a genuinely heartfelt stand in solidarity with the ukraine, with all of their anti war stances and singing imagine by john lennon, but really, if no one would have threatened to drop out in solidarity with the ukraine, would the EBU have thrown russia out? probably not.

also colonialism is such a complicated, intricate topic that is very much not a thing of the past just because a lot of countries have "officially" been declared independent. colonialism is not a "this is a bad thing that happened in the past but, like, it was 100+ years ago and now we're all modern and progressive, we are both colonizers and colonized", what do you think the european interventions in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, etc. are - if not re-branded colonialism? occupying a territory with a foreign military to "free" people of random regimes, when it just so happens that there always seems to be a lot of oil in th occupied territories. do you think Germany, France, the fucking UK are not STILL colonizers? do you know how many weapons Germany sends to Israel each year so that they can keep doing Apartheid down there? (colonialism also persists in globalization and outsourcing of labor into underpaid "third world countries" so that the economy in "first world countries" like Europe stays stable, but this out of the scope of this answer right now) but like? colonialism is not a "thing that happened long ago" its a thing that is still happening with a lot of the countries, and this paragraph isnt really relevant to answer you question but i really wanted to get this straight

also im focussing on the actual colonialist aspect in my post and am more talking abou how i am concerned with the intentional branding of any country as a woke, queer and progressive country, like, "look they sent a gay entry, that is sooo progressive of this country", which make you absolutely blind to the fact that they might be doing Apartheid and shit.

also i explicitly said that i do like how diverse the stage is for artists, it is just that the network's intentions behind putting them there aren't as genuine as you seem to believe. these artists are usually really talented people and I really loved some entries over the years, but 1. these artists need to be aware on what kind of stage they are performing, this isn't some indie underground platform this is one of the biggest music events in the world, and i love that there is an international stage for queer artists to perform, but you kind of have to count in the fact that these people all made the willing choice to be in a contest that is usually hosting Russia, Israel, Azerbaijan, etc. and I am not saying they are bad, horribly immoral people for that but they made that choice and then they should be able to live with the fact that they were in a show that is being criticized by people. does it suck that the biggest (and maybe only) big opportunity for a lot of queer artists seems to be a rather nationalist PR event? yes, of course it does and I genuinely do not blame artists who do ignore the moral implications of the event for having a chance of kickstarting their career, but that changes nothing about the morality of hosting countries that are active imperialists trying to convince you of the opposite. like, why do you think so many countries want in? because Australia and Israel wanted to be part of some european song contest REAAAAALLY bad or because it's THAT much of a PR boost?

The EBU will do whatever brings them the most money and that is:

allowing as many countries to be there (regardless of the fact that some of these still very imperialist participants are using the space to re-brand themselves) and only dropping them if this would cause real backlash from other parts of the audience (hence why Israel will never be dropped)

being "non-political" so to cause as little controversy as possible (if you watch verilybitchie's video she actually also mentions how "non-political" EXCLUSIVELY seems to refer to "do not make any political comments about participating countries when it could cost us viewerships"),

having progressive entries that give off a good image, which is endorsed by the countries as a PR campaign and by the audience, who mostly genuinely wants to see queer and campy entires that aren't the common mainstream. this also leads to the ESC branding itself as such a queer event and then often leaving it to the juries to ensure that nothing too queer or too campy or too communist or too political or too "generally eastern european" wins, because the winning entry needs to be marketable and needs to be playable on every radio station for the next 3 months without causing any offense to all the people who only then watch what the winning song was

none of these things are done for "moral" reasons or because they care about "doing the right thing", but because they make the most profit. but BECAUSE some of them seem so morally inspired the ESC usually tries to weave it into their branding ("was founded in an attempt to unite europe after WW2", "ESC has always been queer", "we stand with ukraine and thus russia isnt in this contest this year")