Switzerland is having is a new Satanic Panic over music
The Swiss are known as a staid people who love keeping things in good order. They’re neutral when it comes to just about everything, right? Well, maybe not. There’s at least one group in Switzerland that’s going back in time to the Satanic Panic we saw over music here in North America back in the 1980s. If you don’t remember, it was an era when certain groups saw Satan lurking everywhere, especially in rock music. (Check out my Uncharted podcast on the subject.)
North Americans (mostly) got over it, but the idea that Satan is out to collect the souls of our youth via music is alive and well in Switzerland.
There are several conservative groups who want to block Switzerland from hosting Eurovision 2025, claiming that the whole thing is a “propaganda event” that “celebrates satanism and occultism.” No, really. They plan to do this by staging a series of budget referendums in Zurich, Geneva, Bern and Basel, the cities that each want to host the event. Switzerland won the right to do this when Nemo, their 2024 representitive, won the whole thing this year.
The Federal Democrative Union onf Switzerland party (hereafter known as the EDU) wants to strangle the bidding cities’ loan applications by putting everything to a vote. I quote:
“The Eurovision song contest is a ghastly propaganda occasion. A country that provides a stage to such disgusting trash won’t elevate its image but merely showcase its own intellectual decline…“More and more artists present openly occultist messages and underline them with respective symbols.”
The EDU’s biggest bugaboo seems to have been with Bambie Thug, Ireland’s 2024 entry. She was actually pretty cool.
The other issue is that Nemo is a non-binary artist. That pissed them off, too.
The Swiss people shouldn’t worry too much. The EDU is a minor political party without much clout. Still, we can make fun of them.
