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A song contest intended to promote European harmony and cultural exchange morphs into a battle over human rights. A boycott dominates headlines and polarises opinion. Performers with big hair proclaim art over politics.

It could only be Eurovision. But the year was 1969, and the dispute centred on Austria’s decision to shun the host, Spain, because it was a dictatorship – a boycott echoed half a century later by five countries who are shunning this week’s contest in Vienna because of Israel’s participation.

As Abba put it in 1974 when they won with Waterloo: The history book on the shelf / Is always repeating itself.

However, the scale and bitterness of this year’s mutiny appears to mark a departure from previous controversies and blares like a klaxon over Saturday night’s final.

“People love to mock Eurovision, saying it’s irrelevant, it’s camp, but this backlash proves otherwise,” said William Lee Adams, an author and commentator who runs an independent Eurovision website and YouTube channel.

“This is the biggest boycott that Eurovision has ever seen, and that goes a long way to dent its image. Eurovision is meant to bring countries together, and if countries no longer want to participate that undermines the entire enterprise.”

The world’s most watched non-sporting cultural event is marking its 70th anniversary in the Austrian capital without Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Iceland, which quit in protest at Israel’s inclusion while attacks continue in Gaza.

“In the face of illegal war and also genocide, silence is not an option,” Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, said on Friday. “We will not be in Vienna, but we will do so with the conviction that we are on the right side of history.”

Instead of ballads at the Wiener Stadthalle arena, Spain’s state broadcaster TVE will air an alternative music show, Slovenia’s RTV will show documentaries on Gaza, and Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, will air a 1996 episode of the Father Ted sitcom in which Catholic priests sing My Lovely Horse at a European contest and earn nul points. The news site Extra.ie called the move “genius trolling” under the headline My Lovely Boycott.

Few in Vienna will be laughing. The Eurovision motto is “united by music”, but police have ramped up security amid a febrile mood. Israel and its supporters say antisemitism drives the boycott, while supporters of the protest accuse the contest of art-washing atrocities against Palestinians.

Chants of “stop the genocide” erupted during the semi-final performance of Israel’s contestant, Noam Bettan. Evidence that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government stretched rules on public voting in 2024 and 2025 will add extra tension when this year’s results are announced.

How did a jamboree founded on the idea of peace and harmony go from sequins and flares to geopolitical slugfest? An event with two contests – performers on stage in a joyous cacophony of kitsch, and governments and activists in their own arena of acrimony and point scoring.

“The year where this all boiled over was 2024,” said Chris West, the author of Eurovision: A History of Modern Europe Through the World’s Greatest Song Contest. “That’s when things got completely out of hand and the EBU lost control. They haven’t really got it back.”

The European Broadcasting Union is the grouping of 113 public service media across 56 countries that runs Eurovision. Supporters credit it with overseeing an ever-expanding global spectacle that last year drew 166 million viewers. Detractors say it is spineless and unable to navigate propaganda and politicisation.

It is a world removed from 1956 when the EBU staged the inaugural contest in Lugano, Switzerland, with just seven countries, a sedate affair of bouquets and ballgowns compared with the lurid extravaganza of later decades.

The impetus was partly technological – it was a way to test equipment in live transnational broadcasting – and partly an idealistic desire to avert any repeat of the second world war, said West. “The Eurovision song contest was born out of that sense of ‘never again’.”

Its Swiss founder, Marcel Bezençon, was a friend of Jean Monnet, who pioneered the embryonic EU. “It was all part of this ‘let’s bring Europe together’,” said West. Politics, at first, did not intrude. “France was fighting a vicious colonial war in Algeria, but nobody sort of mentioned that.”

That began to change after the inclusion of Spain and Portugal. A Danish activist stormed the stage in Copenhagen in 1964 with a banner that said “Boycott Franco & Salazar”, a reference to the Spanish and Portuguese dictators.

After Spain won in 1968 – vote rigging by Franco allegedly helped Massiel’s rendition of La, La, La to pip Cliff Richard’s Congratulations – Austria boycotted the next year’s contest in Madrid.

Abba, Dana and Brotherhood of Man scored memorable wins in the 1970s but it was also the decade that Greece and Turkey staged tit-for-tat boycotts and that military plotters in Portugal used its 1974 entry, E Depois Do Adeus by Paulo de Carvalho, as a signal to launch a coup.

Arab EBU members refused to participate in or show Eurovision. Jordan made an exception in 1978 but cut transmission during Israel’s performance and showed pictures of flowers. When Israel led the voting, Jordan cut transmission again and claimed Belgium won, though Israel prevailed.

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority disowned its 2000 entry, Sameach by Ping Pong, after the band waved Israeli and Syrian flags.

Yugoslavia’s bloody break-up led to one of the contest’s most dramatic entries: Muhamed Fazlagic risked his life to escape besieged Sarajevo and represent Bosnia and Herzegovina in Ireland.

“At the climax of the song he turned his back to the audience and spread his arms. He later told me that he was saying, ‘Europe turned their back on us during this conflict, so now I’m going to do that to you’,” said Adams, who documented his own relationship with Eurovision in a memoir, Wild Dances.

LGBTQ+ artists brought their own strand of activism, said West. “Eurovision was a safe space for gay people before that, but it became very open in the late 1990s. That’s a different kind of politics, but it’s still politics.”

Newly independent states formed after the Soviet Union’s dissolution used the contest as a platform for nationhood, said West. “Eurovision became a way in which countries could be European before they were allowed to join things like Nato or the EU.”

Russia’s entry into the competition, and its wars in Georgia and Ukraine, sparked proxy battles on and off the stage, with performers using coded lyrics and images to circumvent the ban on overtly political material.

Organisers blocked Georgia’s entry in 2009 – when the contest was held in Moscow – because its song, We Don’t Wanna Put In by Stephane & 3G, was deemed a reference to Vladimir Putin.

A Ukrainian drag queen, Verka Serduchka, made waves in 2007 with ostensibly nonsense lyrics, “lasha tumbai”, that sounded like “Russia goodbye” when sung in the chorus. Ukraine won in 2016 with the ballad 1944, about Stalin’s deportation of Crimean Tatars, which ended with the singer, Jamala, giving a piercing scream.

“Ukraine has explicitly used Eurovision as part of its war effort. It treats its singers as ambassadors, out there reminding the world that Ukraine exists,” said Adams.

Russia tried to soften its image with peace anthems and apple-cheeked performers until it was banned in 2022. Eurovision’s chief executive, Martin Green, said the ban reflected not the full-scale invasion of Ukraine but the state broadcaster’s lack of independence from the Kremlin. Asked this week if Russia could return to the competition while the war continued, he replied: “Theoretically yes.”

For Adams, Eurovision reflects national rivalries in a polarised world. “We don’t vote for Jessica or David, we vote for Spain or Italy, you’re choosing the flag. Singers become political symbols, whether they want to or not.” That was not necessarily a bad thing. “Where else can tiny Moldova compete against the United Kingdom and win? That’s the power of it.”

West has a theory that the UK’s meagre wins and snarky commentary by the late BBC presenter Terry Wogan fuelled Eurosceptic sentiment. “Wogan was an absolute disaster for Britain’s relationship with Europe. It contributed to a kind of grumpy ‘We don’t like Europe and they hate us’ attitude.”

Even so, amid all the boycotts and backlashes and bickering, he believes there is enduring fondness for a show that is still, after all these years, a medium of cultural exchange. “It’s a little part of being European.”