Conservative groups in Switzerland are threatening to block the country from hosting next year's Eurovision Song Contest by calling for budget referendums in potential host cities, claiming the popular music competition is a "propaganda event that celebrates Satanism and the occult," the Guardian reports.
Switzerland won the right to host the world's biggest music event after Swiss singer Nemo won this year in Sweden with the song "The Code". The cities of Zurich, Geneva, Bern and Basel are bidding to host this five-day spectacle.
However, the Christian-conservative Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland (EDU) said it would try to use the country's system of direct democracy to put the candidate cities' loan applications to a vote.
"The Eurovision Song Contest is a terrible propaganda event. A country that provides a stage for such disgusting garbage will not improve its image, but will only show its own intellectual decline," EDU said on social media on Tuesday.
Samuel Kühlmann, a senior EDU official, told Swiss broadcaster SRF that his party was alarmed by the growing "celebration, or at least tolerance, of ... Satanism and the occult" at the Eurovision Song Contest.
"More and more artists are openly sending occult messages and emphasizing them with appropriate symbols," he added.
Irish singer Bambia Thug's stage performance at this year's edition of the competition included a dancer with devil-like horns and a circle of candles around a pentagram, which in its inverted form represents a common satanic symbol.
In the final in Malmö, Nemo became the first non-binary artist to win the competition in its 68-year history, with a song that celebrates identity outside of male and female gender norms.
The EDU is a small political party with only one seat in the Swiss National Council, but its calls for referendums in some cantons have been joined by the larger right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) and the Swiss Taxpayers Association.
The youth wing of the SVP cited the introduction of a third gender and "open anti-Semitism" as reasons for supporting the referendum. In May, large protests in support of Palestine were held in front of the venue of the final and semi-finals in Malmö.
And while it cannot be said with certainty that the right would win the referendums, these threats introduce a dose of uncertainty into the planning of the next Eurovision Song Contest.
Votes could not take place before November, but the host city for the May 2025 event should be chosen by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation in consultation with the European Broadcasting Union by the end of August.
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