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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1584 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The Eurovision Song Contest was held this evening, which I haven't watched in about twenty years. A friend of mine suggested that we watch it, but was unsure if she'd be able to host, as her flatmate was insistent on boycotting it in light of Israel being "allowed" to participate. In the end her flatmate was out of the house so we were able to watch it in her flat.

I'd assumed that, given the absence of her anti-Zionist flatmate, we'd be able to enjoy the Eurovision as the trashy, campy experience that was intended, without politics intruding. I was mistaken: my friend, her boyfriend and one of her friends insisted on turning off the stream during Israel's performance and made innumerable derisive comments about them during the night. I'm a coward who wants to keep the peace so I held my tongue for the most part.

Israel received modest double-digit votes from the national juries, but after the audience vote, they rocketed up to first place with an astonishing 357 votes, total. In second place was Austria with 258 jury votes, and in the end Austria clinched it. (I honestly cannot say who deserved it more as, as previously mentioned, they turned off the stream during the Israeli performance. I found the Austrian one a little annoying, and if it had been up to me, based on the performances I actually saw, I would have given it to the Germans.)

I was rather dismayed with how quickly my friend retreated into semi-ironic conspiritorialism: saying that the Eurovision would have to investigate their voting procedures next year to ensure no ballot-stuffing was taking place, or attributing Israel's massive success among the audiences as the result of concerted, strategic voting efforts by "the right". (The idea that foul play must have been involved seems to be a consensus opinion, if /r/Ireland is any indication.) The possibilities that a) normie Europeans legitimately liked Israel's performance on a musical level more than the other countries; or b) normie Europeans voted for Israel for political reasons because they're more sympathetic to the Israeli cause than the Palestinian - seem not to have occurred to her.

I am growing increasingly dismayed by the level of ambient nominally pro-Palestinian (but really anti-Israeli) sentiment in Ireland, but it's comforting to be reminded that it's quite the outlier among European countries.

Things took an even weirder turn when Armenia performed and the conversation turned to the Armenian genocide of the 1910s. My friend's Turkish boyfriend, who'd been enthusiastically participating in the Israel-bashing, suddenly became rather defensive, explaining how it wasn't a genocide but merely ethnic cleansing, and anyway forced marches are completely different from genocide, and anyway how do you even establish intent to exterminate a particular ethnic group, and it's hypocritical of European nations to accuse the Turks of genocide when they've done things that were just as bad if not worse* (it was a real mask-off, vino veritas moment, and even my friend seemed to be a bit taken aback by how worked up he got). I felt like saying - it's a bit rich of you to accuse Israel of genocide on the basis of their having killed ~110,000 Palestinians in the span of 75 years, but dismiss the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in one year as "mere" ethnic cleansing. My girlfriend, who's nowhere near as sympathetic to the Israelis as I am, admitted that I had a point here. I hate to say it, but the "it's antisemitism" theory seems to have greater predictive power than many of its competing alternatives.

*On this point I agreed with him: the Armenian genocide is at least as reprehensible as, to pick one example, Belgian conduct in the Congo.

b) normie Europeans voted for Israel for political reasons because they're more sympathetic to the Israeli cause than the Palestinian - seem not to have occurred to her.

I don't know whether this is true or not but I think it's at least not unreasonable for people to get the impression that the support for Palestine is far more universal than it is, especially among people older than 25.

Its mostly the far left that is concerned enough about the topic to publicly talk about and organise protests about the issue, which can leave the impression of much more widespread support than actually exists. Furthermore, the far left is also pissing people off by being histrionic and obnoxious which can lead to people opposing Palestine out of spite rather than opinions on the conflict.

Just looking at my own friend group this is pretty much the case. The only one that brings up the topic is the far left guy, but at a poker night when he didn't show up and the topic came up, it turned out everyone else is either apathetic or quietly pro-israel/anti-Hamas, people just didn't want to get into a fight with the pro-palestine guy.

I think this a fairly frequent thing happening and especially with the left due to their ability to organise protests.

So frequent there's a term for it.

Kind of but it isn't necessarily a right/left thing and people don't necessarily falsify their opinions.

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