Australia joining the Eurovision shows the awesome soft power of the song contest

All you want from Europe is free trade, cheap flights and the Eurovision Song Contest – the rest is bureaucracy. One of the contest’s many strengths is its generous, expansive definition of ‘European’. Its soft power is awesome, and effective. It reaches out to countries banging on the door of the West – nations the European Union itself is too sniffy, paranoid and insular to include.

This has led to several historic occasions, underling Eurovision’s status as the world’s premiere forum for the collision of politics and culture, where hatchets are buried (or dug up) and new alliances struck. Israel has been contesting since 1973, and its giving 12 points to Germany in 1982 was a landmark in rapprochement between the two nations. Dana International’s victory in 1998 showcased Israel’s avant-garde side to a world that had come to associate the country only with war. Turkey’s 2003 victory marked the high point of its desire to join Europe.