Nationalism at Eurovision

Titel: Nationalism at Eurovision: how is it demonstrated? Naam: Herben het Lam Studentnummer: 11149841 Begeleider: Patrick Weir Tweede lezer: Aslan Zorlu Opleiding: Sociale Geografie & Planologie E-mailadres: [email protected] Datum: 17 augustus 2018 UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Nationalism at Eurovision: how is it demonstrated? A new approach to the old east-west distinction of Hans Kohn and others. Herben het Lam 17-8-2018 1 Abstract The supposed distinction between eastern and western European countries based on civic and ethnic nationalism has got many scholars busy, but still there is no consensus on the actual existence of this distinction. The initiator of this idea is Hans Kohn. He dug into the history of nationalism to point out many events that created a distinction between western and eastern Europe. Yet he has been criticised by many later scholars, especially for the judgmental flavour Kohn added to his theory. The present study aimed to find out whether nationalism at the Eurovision Song Contest, which is regarded in science as a platform for geopolitics and nationalism, indicates the existence of an east-west distinction. Time limitations affected this study and its findings, making further research necessary. With a lot of reservation, this study found that there may be an indication for a distinction. 2 Content Introduction 3 Chapter 1: Theoretical framework 4 Chapter 2: Methodology 9 Chapter 3: Analysis 13 Chapter 4: Conclusion 20 Sources 21 Introduction The Eurovision Song Contest is an inter-European popular cultural phenomenon; an annual gathering of musicians and audience from all over Europe for a competition over something that doesn’t seem 3 suitable for competition: music. After all, there’s no accounting for taste. Yet it draws about 200 million viewers annually (The Telegraph, 2015). Hence it is a great example of what is called popular culture: the manifestation of cultural expressions by means of mass-media. In this case, it is music broadcast on television. However, it is not MTV, but it is a contest. And not a contest merely between artists, but a contest between countries. This is where popular culture comes together with geopolitics. The invention and rise of mass-media gave political entities fantastic opportunities to spread their ideas and appeal to their audiences in several new ways. This in turn lead to the banalisation of geopolitics into what is called ‘popular geopolitics’. Not anymore are geopolitics merely a political matter, but also get carried out by the people. This geopolitical nature of the Eurovision Song Contest – this show that brings so many people together – gets it often being associated with the rather divisive theme of nationalism (Coleman, 2008; ESC Insight, 2018; Ismayilov, 2012; Jordan, 2014; Kyriakidou et al., 2017; The New York Times, 2017). Nationalism itself is difficult to define. To understand nationalism, one inevitably needs to understand the idea of the nation. An influential scholar on the topic of nationalism is Hans Kohn. In his 1944 book The idea of nationalism he is not clear as to how he understands the nation. Kohn seems to assume that nations are a given fact, that, at one point in time, came to self-consciousness and acted on that. This idea is rejected by Gellner, who suggests that nations are invented (Anderson, 1983). This suits Anderson’s idea of imagined communities. According to him, the nation is one such community. Every form of community that is larger than the group of people one has face-to-face contact with, is imagined. This implies that nations only exist in the minds of people. Moreover, Anderson argues that the nation is hardly definable. An intriguing question that Anderson brings up, is how millions of people are willing to die for a concept that is not clear and, as such, only exists in people’s minds. The idea of the nation as an imagined community doesn’t necessarily contradict the way Kohn writes about nationalism. Actually, the fact that he distinguishes different types of nationalism, shows that nationalism is a concept that people can define to their own likes. And the struggle for definition in Germany and Greece shows that nationalism is not merely a process that people are unconscious of, but a social construction as a result of human thought. The same counts for the nation, which definition is very closely linked to that of nationalism. On page 9, Kohn even acknowledges the idea of the imagined community, using essentially the same explanation as Anderson, namely that one forms a community with people, of whom most will never get in touch with the one. Other critique comes from Gellner, who brings up the fact that nations can be scattered over different countries, that countries often contain multiple nations and that many nations are not institutionalised into an own political entity (Gellner, 1983). This brings into question whether states represent a nation, and if so, which nation? According to Gellner, nationalism is a political principle that demands that the nation and the state concern exactly the same group of people. However, he argues that not all nations can be satisfied simultaneously. That means that there will always be some nations that have to live in the state belonging to another nation, which in turn means that there will always be states hosting multiple nations. That is also Kuzio’s and Nikolas’ critique on Kohn, namely that Kohn assumes that states and nations comprise the same group of people. At least, Kohn doesn’t refer anywhere to different ethnicities living in the same state. These different ethnicities can have different types of nationalism, and Kohn does not pay attention to this. However, because of the incongruity between state and nation, the nationalist principle should include a willingness to accept co-existence within one state with an unspecified maximum rate of people from other nations. This implies that the nation of the majority dictates the manifestations of nationalism in the state. Kohn however, does not link nationalism to the nation. He writes about 4 nationalism as a process of a mass of people integrating into a political entity, typically a state. While Anderson and Gellner see the nation as the source of nationalism, Kohn sees the nation as the result of nationalism. The nation for Kohn can therefore be any group of people that defines itself as such as a product of nationalism. Anderson’s idea of the imagined community blends in there. So there are many different views on the nation, and as a result also on nationalism. The present thesis aims to find out whether nationalism is in any way reflected in the entries of the Eurovision Song Contest. Chapter 1: Theoretical framework Kohn introduces the idea of a dichotomy within Europe, based on different types of nationalism. These types are civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. Kohn himself does not use these terms in 5 his book, but he does point out the characteristics and origins of the different types of nationalism in West and East Europe. Firstly though, Kohn dug into history to explain how a dichotomy could arise in Europe. Kohn’s theory is completely focused on Europe and he didn’t make any effort to elaborate on other areas in the world. He went as far back as Ancient times, when Christianity came to rise in Israel, while Ancient Greece developed values of democracy and self-consciousness. This is contrary to the current consensus that the nation-state, and therefore nationalism, exists since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (Huntington, 1993). This is due to the different view Kohn has on the relationship between nationalism and the nation-state. Anderson (1983) and Gellner (1983) view the nation- state as the source for nationalism, while Kohn sees the nation-state as a product of nationalism. Hence the Peace of Westphalia has no central role in Kohn’s book, and hence he is going further back than 1648 to explain the rise of nationalism. He mentions the Peace of Westphalia as a written confirmation of a process and discourse that already existed. So, for his explanation of the rise of nationalism, Kohn went back to the Ancient era. Both the Jewish and Greek civilisations practised ideas of humanism and universalism. Furthermore, the Jews generated three characteristics that are important for Kohn’s idea of nationalism in later ages: - The idea of being a people set apart by God as special and, in several domains, superior to other people. Kuzio (2002) argues that it is just this idea why nations try to define themselves, instead of cultural factors setting them apart. So Kuzio is actually saying that Kohn’s historical investigation doesn’t make sense. Then again, Kuzio argues that civic states do not exist, because they all contain ethnic factors as well. He also states, with Yack (1996) that this is logical, because otherwise there would be no reason for a person to rather unite with one group than another group. So in fact he is saying that nations are set apart by ethno-cultural factors. - Consciousness of a national and common history, which for the Jews is closely related to the idea of the chosen people. Their shared history is codified in the Torah. - National Messianism as an idea of the future when there will be a better world, free of evil. These ideas and characteristics got incorporated in Christianity. The Roman Empire later was founded on the Greek values and ideas and advanced them. The Roman Empire was also an opportunity for Christianity to spread over Europe. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the church stepped into the vacuum and had great power in the newly formed countries while political power became decentralised.

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