Eurovision Tourists Go Home

Eurovision's a mess this year. The context everyone already knows is that the Israeli occupation is using it to artwash their genocide of the people of Gaza. There's more to it than that, though. If the UK was hosting it this year, for example, I doubt we'd be seeing such a high level of organised resistance.

You need to bear a few things in mind in order to fully understand Eurovision 2024. For one, Eurovision is a huge deal here in Sweden. I don't think any other country takes the competition as seriously as Sweden does. It's a part of the national identity in a way that's almost impossible for e.g. a British person to understand. I've heard the atmosphere was great least year when Liverpool hosted it. Now imagine The Beatles got their first big break at Eurovision and that 2023 was its 50th anniversary, and try to picture how much more intense the excitement would have been about hosting.

The local context is key too. Malmö is a special place, and it's difficult to imagine a worse choice of venue for this kind of artwashing event. This is a working class city with a strong political left wing. Like half the people living here are either immigrants themselves or have at least one immigrant parent too. Demographically, Malmö just doesn't have the critical mass of obedient white people necessary to successfully artwash the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The conflict between these opposing forces is intense. Projecting a 20th century and painstakingly white vision of Swedishness onto a place like Malmö at a time like this takes more than a couple of project managers and a marketing team.

Folkets Park has a special personal significance to me. The first time I visited Malmö, my wife was hoping to convince me to move here together. We spent a magical day riding around the city on bikes and hanging out. It also happened to be Eid, and when we came to Folkets Park there was a huge Eid festival there. I'd never experienced anything like that before, and something clicked for me about Malmö in that moment. There's still segregation here, but less than other places I've lived. I remember that day every time I visit Folkets Park.

For Eurovision, they've designated Folkets Park as the venue for the fan village. This seems to have required fortifying the place like the compound in Mad Max 2. There's vehicle barriers, snipers, cops, private security, SWAT, armored vehicles, automatic rifles… you name it, it's probably deployed somewhere in Folkets Park this week. I live a good couple of kilometres from the place and even I'm tired of the sound of the police helicopters constantly circling above it.

So it's a bad fucking vibe down there this week. Folkets Park is part of the soul of the city, and they've done it up as some kind of macabre apartheid-themed escape room. Everyone has an anecdote about the place, like the mother who got dragged out for trying to bring in sidewalk crayons for her kids for example. Malmö city council has been working to silence dissent for weeks, culminating in the censorship of a pro-Gaza mural on the graffiti walls outside Folkets Park. Their claim to have removed it by accident is somewhat undermined by their hundreds of other acts of censorship over the past few weeks.

Despite how tense and unpleasant things are in Malmö this week, I've never been more proud to live here. The local Left Party bought in about 600 Palestine flags and had sold out the entire stock by the time I made it over there to get mine. They're everwhere, especially in Möllevången.

The protests against the ethnic cleaning of Gaza has been non-stop here for months, and it's only intensified with the arrival of Eurovision. The smallness of the town helps a lot too, I think. The first protest I went to, instead of social media, it was the low-flying police helicopters that notified me about it and showed me how to get there.

Today, we're off to what I think will be the real Eurovision this year, taking place at the culture stage at Mölleplatsen this evening.

Liverpool hosted Eurovision last year, because Ukraine couldn't host it due to the war. Malmö's sending a much more profound and grassroots message of solidarity and peace this year. I know which one I prefer.