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The Pet Shop Boys in ’90s Russia

“Camp” as a weapon of the West


17/05/2025

The year is 1993. British electro-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys are whisked through Moscow in a limousine that Gorbachev, allegedly, used to ride in. These and other thrilling anecdotes puff a recent piece authored by one half of the duo, Neil Tennant; published in March 2025, in Russia’s opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta and Britain’s The Guardian. Read a little closer and something creeps out of the shadows; something less about Russia in any concrete sense and more a phantom limb throbbing with post-Cold War dread.

From his residue of remembrances Tennant constructs two Russias: the Russia of the 1990s, bathing in the newfound “freedom” to, for instance, dance along to Tennant’s disco whimsy and the Russia of today, depicted as a brutal, warmongering state under a Hitler-like dictator, Vladimir Putin. This latter Russia is the one that haunts the western liberal imaginary. It is an evil so grave that it washes the West clean, and gives purpose and direction to societies that have neither — specifically the trillion-dollar rearmament that will finally drown “Social Europe” in the bathtub of police repression and economic austerity.

There is something weird about the article, spasmodic even. Tennant dispenses disparate sentences, each one containing a supposed fact or recollection that doesn’t easily connect with what follows or precedes it, or whose relevance is opaque. Order is only imposed by occasional meta-paragraphs which impose an interpretive frame on the reader, like a tour guide in a hall of mirrors.

Take Tennant’s recollection of riding in a limo: it only makes sense in light of an earlier paragraph in which he describes, as a youth, reading about the Russian Revolution, where one brutal empire ostensibly morphed into another with supreme villain Joseph Stalin at the helm, who is at the same moment both a “20th-century Ivan the Terrible” and a template for Putin. Tennant unwittingly taps into a stereotype that has congealed all over Western intelligentsia; history in Russia, is not a dialectic, but a loop, with a natural tendency towards authoritarianism. Putin, in Tennant’s gaze, stands as the latest divination of the eternal Asiatic despot.

Again and again, Tennant mourns the loss of freedom in Russia. So it is worth posing the question: what does he think freedom is? There are clues: In one photo accompanying the article, the Pet Shop Boys wear conical hats and onesies as they officially launch MTV in the former Soviet Union. This is Tennant’s implicit vision of freedom: the freedom to have your political struggles harvested, denuded, co-opted, and commodified, and then reflected back in the form of a three-minute music video, sandwiched between advertisements and other three-minute videos, such that politics is voided of the ecstasy and terror of having a life with meaning. Meaning itself is reduced to mimetic novelty. Russia, you’re welcome.

At the very same time as the Pet Shop Boys were launching MTV, Russia was experiencing its most crushing poverty in decades as a result of economic “shock therapy” imposed by the West, consisting of a fire-sale of public assets, the disassembly of social services, and the bludgeoning of Russia into a market economy. Shock therapy wasn’t just economics, it was necropolitics. According to one analysis in the BMJ, there were up to 3 million “excess adult deaths” between 1991 and 2001 based on mortality rates from the last days of the Soviet Union — “surplus” people who might have lived had history forked onto a different path.

It’s worth remembering that the transformation of Russia was neither spontaneous nor home grown; it was pushed through by Western governments, academics and agencies like USAID. The carnage of the ‘90s aligns well with the goals of a leaked Pentagon paper from 1992 which sought to prevent any country from ever becoming a peer competitor to the United States. Tennant seems blissfully oblivious to these unpleasant details.

Five years after the 1993 Moscow MTV junket, the Pet Shop Boys are back and the country is still in the midst of this deadly crisis. We do get a flicker of recognition, but it quickly sparks out:

“It was thrilling for me to be physically present in streets that had so much historical resonance, but it was also impossible to ignore the victims of the economic problems that followed the implosion of the Soviet system — old ladies, for instance, selling possessions on the street.”

Here is Lacan’s traumatic Real breaking through the cracks of Tennant’s fantasy Russia, only briefly, before the texts jaunts compulsively into a distracted reverie:

“Clubs were fun, and there was a wild freedom in the air. Once, when we couldn’t get a taxi, the police drove us back to our hotel from a gay club! We enjoyed hanging out with a few friends we’d made.”

Which friends?

“A young woman who was the daughter of the former Mayor of St. Petersburg, named Ksenia Sobchak, was briefly part of the clubbing crowd.”

This nightlife comrade was the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, a key player in transforming Russia into a market economy through the application of shock therapy. Sobchak helped cobble together the Russian constitution that imposed private property on Russia and condensed power in the presidency. Of course, father and daughter are not the same entity, but both represent the class that the Pet Shop Boys enjoyed fraternising with.

According to Putin biographer Philip Short, Sobchak and his Western advisors unleashed a tidal wave of privatisation that created an oligarchic class by stripping key Soviet assets and handing them over to cronies at rock-bottom prices. Meanwhile, basic services in St. Petersburg collapsed, and for four winters straight, citizens suffered through heating cuts. By 1995, rates of homelessness, poverty, fraud, and suicide in the city were among the highest in the world, and diseases like tuberculosis, diphtheria, and dysentery were making a comeback. Life expectancy had fallen from 72 in 1987 to just 64.

The Sobchaks, their class and their western backers were collectively responsible for the economic system that led an anonymous old woman to ruin Tennant’s enjoyment with her abject poverty. Rich Russians were free to party in upmarket clubs, while the rest of the country was free to starve, free to freeze to death in apartments where the heating shuts down in the dead of winter.

How did Tennant miss all of this? Because to see it would rupture the liberal fantasy of innocence. Recognising his complicity and that of his Russian buddies, would be like finding a speck of blood in a line of cocaine — a real bummer.

On reflection the Pet Shop Boys may have always walked this line between naivete and indifference when it comes to political economy. This may have been hard to observe due to Tennant’s translucent lyrical style where camp morphs into a very British form of irony that masks a detached complicity with the way things are. Take their infamous track “West End Girls” — an account of working-class “East End boys” and daughters of the establishment “West End girls” coming together through the shared consumptive experience of clubbing. Appearing in the wake of Thatcher’s detonation of class solidarity in 1980s Britain, the track obliquely shrouds working class defeat in the gauze of social mobility. The vanquishers and the vanquished rub shoulders, strictly on weekends, strictly in the form of commodified leisure for those who can pay to play.

So it’s not that surprising that Tennant is willing to fall into a vision, however subtle, of civilisational conflict between Russia and the West. A few paragraphs after recalling his ride in a police car from a gay club to his hotel, Tennant writes that “being a Russian gay activist is now to be labelled and punished as an ‘extremist.” Russia was a fleeting gay utopia, brought to you by the Pet Shop Boys and MTV, that was then snuffed out by Putin. While it remains true that queer people in Russia live in extreme precarity, hostility to homosexuality was sustained throughout the heady ’90s even if this wasn’t visible to visiting celebrities. The effect of this contrast, whether intended or not, is to weaponize queer precarity in the service of homonationalism.

And when it comes to weaponizing tolerance, the West has game. This justification boosted the military adventurism of the “War on Terror” in the Middle East and Central Asia, with countless deaths and many countries brought to ruin as a consequence.

This brings us to the core menace of Tennant’s article: its heady blend of naivete and binarism falls into a broader miasma of messages giving drip by drip justification for the inevitability of a military conflict between Russia and the West. To his credit, Tennant never calls for war, just a “revolution of attitudes” in which Putin is put on trial and Russia atones for its brutal invasion of Ukraine. Yet even here, the spectre of a demonic Russia and an angelic West appears. I oppose imperial war machines of all stripes and believe the Russian invasion of Ukraine has no justification. That should not conceal that the war has its origins in the creeping expansion of NATO towards Russia’s borders, despite US assurances that it would not do so. Nor should it elide that the US sought to prolong the war in order to weaken Russia, scuttling a nearly completed peace agreement in 2022 at the cost of hundreds of thousands of needless deaths and mutilations.

Tennant’s reflections show us that Russia, for the West, is not really a place so much as a screen on which to project whatever fantasies align with your unconscious political commitments, whether that be a neoliberal smash-and-grab or a civilisational conflict. Through gentle, persistent messaging, it has become common sense that Putin will roll into Berlin unless European societies run on a war footing, sacrificing the fight against the existential threat of climate change and crumbling systems of social care. The parliament of Germany, where I live, has just rammed through changes to its constitution that allow the government to borrow vast sums to fuel an expansion of military power. Perhaps soon I will be selling my belongings on a street corner to pay for Panzer tanks and Javelin missiles.

To close, Tennant signs off with a little humility: “I do not imagine that anyone really cares what we think about Russia, but you did ask.” Similarly, you might wonder why I’m agonizing over Pet Shop Boys and their Russian junkets. Indeed, there is nothing special about Tennant’s article–there are hundreds like it produced every month. Nevertheless, the collective force of these and other hapless musings moves at least a few levers in the war machine. In the 1990s, the Boys were just a tiny ripple in a vast wave of soft power that gave a little glamour to the shock therapy that sent millions to their graves. Now, they unwittingly set the stage for war and austerity to engulf the entire continent, as Russia is cast, again and yet again, as the interminable enemy.

“It’s Not About Us”

red. media is facing criminal charges but wants you to see the bigger picture. Interview with Hüseyin Dogru, founder of red. media

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Hello Hüseyin. Thanks for speaking to us. Could you start by introducing yourself 

My name is Hüseyin Dogru. I’ve been a journalist for 15-16 years and am the founder of “red. media”, a socialist, anti-fascist news outlet. Initially I focused on social-political issues in Germany, Turkey, and Kurdish topics. Since 7 or 8 years I’ve been concentrating on international politics; documentaries or articles about people’s struggle around the world.

If you google “red. media” one of the first things that comes up is “arm of the Kremlin” or “Putin apologist”. Is that a fair description?

Sometimes we were also accused of being a Chinese or Hamas media outlet. These accusations are completely untrue. German media reporting always refers to articles written by Tagesspiegel, who did a so-called investigation on us, using the logic: “Hüseyin Dogru worked at Redfish. Now, he’s running red. media,” and “red. media took over Redfish’s telegram channel. It must be the same.” 

The Telegram channel part is true. red. media took Redfish’s Telegram channel because it was something that I had built, and I was free to take it with me when we left Redfish. But to me, the first claim is similar to claiming that many Germans must be Nazis since they have a Nazi family member in their past! No, we are not Russian. We are not Kremlin. red. media is not funded by Russia or any other state.

Let’s set the record straight: what is your opinion on the war in Ukraine?

The war in Ukraine is the product of a conflict between two rival imperialist blocs. On one side, NATO, the United States, and the EU have expanded eastward, violating historical agreements meant to limit NATO’s growth. On the other side, Russia, itself a capitalist power, pursues its own economic and political ambitions through military force. Neither bloc represents the interests of ordinary people. Their power struggles have turned Ukraine into a battleground, with the real cost borne by the working class and civilian population. Genuine solidarity demands rejecting both imperialist camps and focusing instead on those who are paying for this war with their lives.

Where do you receive your funding from?

As stated on our website, donations from individuals and organizations around the world make our work possible. We don’t openly share our donors because those individuals don’t wish to have their names public, due to us being targeted, criminalized, and associated with Russia and other states.

What has caused the German media to call you out like this?

When we started red. media, we gained a small following of mainly anti-imperialists and leftists. But after October 7th, everything changed for us. Due to our underground and intensive reporting on the genocide in Palestine, our reach exploded. When our Instagram and Youtube accounts were shut down 9 months later, we had almost half a billion views across the world. We were bigger than all the other social media accounts who are covering that topic.

I think that was one of the reasons why we got attacked. First, the Berlin-based Tagesspiegel wrote a very politically-aimed investigation about us. They attacked our pro-Palestinian coverage by framing us as Russians. 

I think it’s political because they also accused us of organizing Palestinian protests in Berlin. By criminalizing us, they try to criminalize that movement. Similarly, people like Nicholas Potter describe us as a “Kremlin-controlled, radical-left, pro-Palestinian”.

Now there are criminal charges against you. Can you explain what’s happening?

Last year Nicholas Potter wrote an article in Taz about us, claiming that we are Russian and picking up on the Tagesspiegel article which claimed we were behind the university protests and occupation. We did not agree with this so-called research––which was not based on facts at all. We said, okay, let’s have a look at who Potter is. Does he have a political agenda? If you look at his journalism, it is very one-sided and uncritically pro-Israel.

We then made a post which was just a list of places where he worked and contributed. That post went viral on X because a lot of people could see what we were trying to highlight: that this supposedly anti-extremist, anti-racist, so-called leftist journalist was doing a fellowship at The Jerusalem Post. You need to have a specific character to go into a country where a genocide is happening and work at the news outlet parroting the narrative of those committing war crimes. 

Within 21 hours, Jörg Reichel from Ver.di (dju), the German journalist trade union, posted a tweet saying, “this is a campaign against Potter and journalism.”

Then––I think January or February according to Potter––some people supposedly created a poster combining our post with a photo of Potter and the word Hurensohn [“son of a bitch”]. In response, Tagesspiel wrote an article which linked red. media’s initial post with the flyers and suggested an aggressive, silencing campaign.

This got picked up by every single media outlet that you can imagine in Germany: die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Taz, as well as politicians, individual journalists, and more. As time went on, Potter’s claim turned from “red. media is maybe leading a campaign” to “this is a campaign by red. media.” He provided no proof for this.

Now, 2-3 weeks ago, I got a letter from the German police asking me to comment on a case which was filed against me as part of a campaign based on defamation and lies. There is no information in the letter about who has filed this case. And now we’re waiting to see what is going to happen. 

Did any of these news media companies try to interview you about this?

No-one interviewed us about this case. When German news outlets approached us in the past, they sent us very pointed questions. The highlight was Deutschlandfunk. When they wrote to us, one of the “questions” was: “You’re obviously funded by Russia…” Based on what? None of the interview requests that we got asked us what we think about Russia, or about Putin, or Ukraine. No one ever asked us these questions. Everyone accused us of being a misinformation media outlet. But they never showed research or evidence that we had put out the wrong facts.

Do you expect this to go to court?

Yes, I think this will go to court, but their suit would not survive as a defamation campaign in front of a normal, non-biased court because our post is just a list of public information that is available on Potter’s website.

I think the main strategy behind the charge is to have a headline: “Kremlin-controlled red. media founder Hüseyin Dogru charged.” After that, they will not publish the outcome. Media companies using legal scare tactics or media campaigns is a systematic problem right now in Germany, not only in this case, but also against activists, academics, and even UN special reporteur Francesca Albanese. I think it is important, even if we don’t win, to go to court and leave a message for history.

What happens now? 

We will take every legal step necessary to defend ourselves against these and future baseless attacks. We will hold them legally accountable for their unethical reporting and defamation campaign against us.

Why? Because they wrote articles where they claim things as a fact for which they can’t show any proof. Instead they all cite each other. For example: “based on an article by the Taz edit-in-chief, red. media is behind this campaign,” without any further fact-checking. Der Freitag even wrote “red. media, which is banned in Germany…” This is the real disinformation campaign.

People will easily accept that the Tagesspiegel, a pretty right-wing newspaper, will campaign against you. They’ll be a bit more confused about Taz and der Freitag, which are both supposed to be liberal papers, and Ver.di which is a Trade union. Unions are supposed to defend their members. Similarly, Reporter Ohne Grenzen (ROG, Reporters Without Borders) is not a right-wing organisation. How is the opposition to what you’re doing so broad? What’s in it for them in attacking you?

Taz is not a liberal or leftist newspaper. First of all, one of the editors-in-chief of Taz is a former Tagesspiegel employee and Washington correspondent. If you look at who’s working at Taz or who worked there, it’s mainly people at the Springer-Verlag, the most Islamophobic and racist newspaper in Germany and in Europe. 

Der Freitag and other news outlets in that category appear very liberal and unbiased until it comes to one thing: German foreign policy. In the fundamental reporting and editorial line, I would say that they ultimately side with Israel. Not with the Palestinian people. They’re on the side of those who are committing the genocide there.

In support of ROG, in their 2024 report, they are trying to be more neutral. They wrote: there is a pressure against journalists in German newspapers not to write critically about Israel. They also wrote how German journalists are unfairly targeting activists. But when it comes to the story of us being backed by Russia, they didn’t even check their facts or the sources and have not responded to us about how they verified this claim. If you look at who is at ROG in Germany, the people are former Taz and one is still at Tagesspiegel. So, can they be politically unbiased?

People can read all this and see, oh, this is terrible, then walk on. What can they concretely do to support you?

We are not important. It is more important that journalists like you, activists, and everyone else around the world highlight and scandalize the method of German journalists who are acting almost like a propaganda arm of the state. Who have lost objectivity. Who have lost the basic journalistic standards of checking the facts. 

We have the German police battering pro-Palestinian people, and the German judicial system wanting to deport 4 non-criminal, pro-Palestinian activists, which is against EU law. Meanwhile, the German journalistic monopoly is enacting the most dangerous violence: discrediting activists and journalists, creating a political atmosphere which leads to the arrests, demonstration bans, deportations, and possibly more. 

So people should scandalize the fact that German journalists are supporting or legitimizing a genocide and crimes against humanity in Palestine. It’s not about red. media, and we don’t want people to make it about us.

But if you do get taken to court, you’d invite people to come and join you?

Of course. I think that it is very important that people see what is happening publicly. There might be a danger that I get arrested or that my house gets raided. In a normal world maybe not, but in this world today, everything is possible, especially in Germany. That is why it will be important that people come and call out the German media outlets who are responsible for these things. It’s not about us.

I feel like Germany is not shy about the fact that they were repressing protests, free speech, and now deporting these activists. And the world already knows. So, who would Germany answer to?

I don’t think the world knows. Even we forgot what happened one and a half years ago in the streets of Germany. We forgot that in one day Israel bombed the first hospital and more than 300 people died in one night. We forgot all of that because social media is flooded with information right now, which we can’t select. 

We are exposed to so much information, which is also a strategy by Tagesspiegel and co., flooding everything. They have a monopoly here in Germany. Pro-Palestinian things are deleted, everything else is pushed. The whole system needs to be exposed.

The most important thing that people can do is read, investigate, and be critical with all media sources––including us! Don’t believe what we’re saying. Imagine that Taz writes an article saying: “According to Tagesspiegel, red. media is Russian.” And then another one writes “red. media is Russian.” Maybe you read only the last article, but follow the line back to where that information originally came from.

People are saying that German Society is shifting to the right. No, the shifting finished when the AfD went into the parliament. The shift is over when journalists already support censorship and repetition of lies. That’s dangerous. All those campaigns and attacks and scandalizing of protests as “pro-Hamas activity” is meant to completely make sure you don’t see the Fascist, authoritarian laws being implemented. Maybe, I hope not. That’s why they are trying to silence us.

Editor’s note: Since this interview, red. media has received direct threats to their team-members’ lives and thus made the decision to shut down. See their press release for more details.

Photo Gallery – Nakba Day 2025

Südstern, 15th May 2025


16/05/2025

The AfD and the Working Class

Ten million Germans voted for the far-right AfD in the Bundestag election in February. Very many of them were ordinary people, workers. What does that mean for the left?


On election night in February, one figure stood out for me: the number of workers voting for the AfD. According to exit polling, the far-right party took 38% of manual workers’ votes nationally, ahead of the Christian Democrats (22%) and the Social Democrats (just 12%). In the AfD’s strongholds, the figure must be even higher.

Alongside an ideologically motivated core, the AfD is clearly attracting the votes of substantial numbers of workers. That sets it apart from classical fascism, whose base was the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat (the middle class and the unemployed).

The Trade Unions

Support for the AfD raises new and challenging questions within the trade unions, although there is scant public discussion about them. As one trade union official in eastern Germany told me, “Union members voting AfD is nothing unusual these days.” In fact, there are workplaces where AfD supporters are among the most bolshy. Notably, these tend to be AfD voters but rarely members.

There are also places where significant numbers of trade union members reject their union’s opposition to the party. The metalworkers’ union is reported to have lost members after its flags were seen at the blockade of the AfD’s national conference in January. At the mass demonstrations against the AfD before the elections, led by Die Grünen and Die Linke, the trade unions seemed to be downplaying their visible, organised presence. That said, a large proportion of the participants were also union members.

Electoral Geography

The electoral geography tells us more. The AfD’s best results read like a map of the worst byproducts of neoliberalism: the deindustrialised east (but not prospering Leipzig and Dresden), the poorest cities (Gelsenkirchen), and the struggling peripheries (the Bavarian Forest). The same applies within the cities, too: few AfD votes in Berlin’s gentrified middle-class quarters, many in the high-rise estates on the outskirts (Marzahn, Hellersdorf, Hohenschönhausen). The latter used to be solid strongholds for Die Linke.

The pattern reappears within Berlin’s boroughs, too. Prenzlauer Berg is green, but its neglected social housing is an island of AfD blue. In Tempelhof, Spandau, and Neukölln, the AfD’s best polling station results were all in medium—and high-rise housing estates on the city’s outer periphery—Waldsassener Strasse (28.4%), Südekumzeile (31.2%), and Frauenviertel (25.0%), respectively.

The Provinces

Where I live – in small-town Brandenburg – the AfD got 35% across the board. For the moment, there is little sign of a change in the atmosphere. There is not much talk about politics at all. When there is, it is generally to grumble about the price of food, second-hand cars, petrol and butter, wind turbines, and the Greens’ heating regulations (Heizungsgesetz). The farmers’ protests in early 2024 were a talking point and were seen positively. In some quarters, there is anger and disdain over Germany’s role in the Ukraine war. There are milieus where resentment over the Covid lockdown policies is still raw. Intriguingly, there is a conspicuous overlap between the anti-war and Covid-sceptical circles.

There is certainly grumbling about refugees, too. It would be mistaken, though, to attribute every objection to animus against people of colour. Part of the sentiment mirrors the discussions in Germany’s Turkish communities, for example, where the idea that immigration should be reduced is not uncommon. Some of those complaining about hotels being converted into refugee accommodation point to the very large sums of public money being funneled into the hands of a few very wealthy property owners.

I witnessed an interesting conflict in 2017 when the refugee issue was still new. A petition went around one village, objecting to the local hotel being converted into mass accommodation. It turned out that the council had initially promised to rent people’s spare rooms and underused holiday lets to house refugees. Locals who had looked forward to a little extra income were aggrieved that the decision had been overturned. It’s complicated…

Contradictory Ideas

Are the AfD’s voters all committed reactionaries and racists? Is it really that simple? An exit survey gives us some insights. 18% of AfD voters think it would be good if only Germans lived in Germany. 9% want all migrants to leave Germany, even those who are naturalised. These sentiments give us an indication of the size of the hardcore, out-and-out racists. Those figures would represent an election result of 4% and 2%, respectively. Which is roughly what open neo-Nazi parties got in the past.

On the other hand, 42% of AfD voters think the party should distance itself more clearly from the extreme right. Moreover, 84% say the party is in the middle of the political spectrum, not on the right. 85% say it is the only party they can vote for to protest against the established parties. 39% said they voted AfD because they were disappointed with other parties. The figures are contradictory in places, but that is no surprise.

AfD voters worry more about making ends meet than the supporters of any other party. Three-quarters of them fear they won’t be able to pay their bills or keep up their standard of living. The AfD attracts more men than women. Age-wise, it is strongest in the 25-59 group and notably weak among the retired.

It is hard to say how closely the AfD’s voters are connected to the party. There is little sign that the ties are generally strong.

We must consider the AfD’s significant vote as a symptom of broader underlying developments. On the one hand, large sections of the population are deeply alienated from all the established parties. These include significant parts of the ‘classical’ working class – not just manual workers but all those furthest from the credentialed professions. Alternatively, much of what currently passes for ‘the left’ revolves around the ‘better’ white-collar occupations (and, to an extent, even managerial). Geographically and socially, there is little contact between the two. Further, on the ‘left’, there is often little understanding that material issues are of genuine importance (pay, energy bills, food prices).

Frustration and Alienation

A significant section of the working class has had enough of the way things are, the stress and insecurity of existence under neoliberalism: low pay, stagnant or falling standard of living, food inflation, fuel poverty, difficulty getting medical appointments, the prospect of poverty in old age, fifteen euros an hour for skilled factory work; the list is endless.

This boils down to a deep sense that ‘they’ just don’t care about ‘us’. ‘They’ are all the mainstream parties and most (if not all) state institutions. There is a deep alienation from the established parties and the mainstream political process as a whole. This lies behind much of the AfD vote, non-voting, and part of the BSW vote.

Conversely, any party that parleys with the establishment is rejected. That certainly applies to Die Linke, which has placed great emphasis on participating in state governments. The recent Bundestag election saw its former strongholds in eastern Germany reduced to university towns and student quarters. It may have laudable slogans and policies but is not perceived as credible about implementing them. After all, the mainstream parties talk a good game, too. For many who oppose Germany’s shockingly rapid militarisation, Die Linke’s vote for war credits was the last straw. But no real surprise, given the party’s lack of backbone over the Ukraine misadventure.

The BSW’s sudden loss of support in the autumn after it entered state-level coalitions in Brandenburg and Thuringia was arguably also due to its loss of credibility after joining established power structures.

Migration as a Cipher

Ordinary people have been let down and neglected by all the mainstream parties and institutions, including the trade unions. The successive betrayals are particularly clear in the former East Germany. After reunification, CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised ‘flourishing landscapes’ and left behind a deindustrialised wasteland. Voters turned to the SPD and were rewarded with Gerhard Schröder’s trashing of the welfare state. They moved left again in the mid-2000s, flocking to Die Linke, which joined and led regional and local governments across the east – to privatise social housing and administer austerity policies. They have all failed us dismally. At the end of that process – and in the absence of a credible left alternative – it is not surprising if some people follow the Pied Piper.

In that sense, the migration issue serves as a cipher for all the wider social and material problems we are told are unsolvable (or non-existent). If ordinary people felt their lives were good and improving, there would be little or no fuss over migration.

Drive a Wedge

There is an important question lurking behind the whole discussion. Does the vote for the AfD represent a real and significant shift in allegiances? Is it more a transient symptom of a period where old loyalties are crumbling (or have crumbled), but a real pole of resistance is yet to emerge? Only time will truly tell, but we still have to act now based on one or other assessment. My money is on the latter.

It is a tragedy that the far-right, anti-migrant AfD has been able to capitalise on the mood of frustration and anger. Ten or fifteen years ago, that was the Left Party’s constituency. Those who pushed the Left Party towards respectable reformism bear a great responsibility for subsequent developments.

The labour movement has a long and proud tradition of overcoming prejudice and discrimination through joint struggle; that should be our lodestar. Working class resistance always involves discussing and challenging backward ideas.

With so little class push-back, the current situation offers few opportunities. We should grasp those that do appear: Would there have been possibilities around the BVG transport strikes? Or the facility management dispute at the Charité teaching hospital? Or for tenants’ committees in the big housing estates?

One example to examine would be the experience of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France from 2017 to 2019. That movement emerged out of the same social and geographical constellation we are dealing with now: alienated populations in neglected, austerity-wracked regions. Ideas adapted as the mass struggle played out, and new alliances formed. The vast and militant protests included many from migrant communities, along with considerable numbers who had voted for the far-right National Rally.

Essentially, we should be looking to drive a wedge between the organised racists and fascists (who we should continue to fight tooth and nail) and their voters. Condemning anyone who ever voted for the AfD as an out-and-out Hitler Nazi is not only factually incorrect; it is also thoroughly counterproductive.

Parts of this article were previously published on Counterfire.

 “Eurovision is about getting very impassioned about something that does not matter”

Interview with Ciarán Dold from Corner Späti and Gyrovision


14/05/2025

Hi Ciarán, thanks for talking to us. Can you start by just briefly introducing yourself?

I’m a comedian and researcher and probably better known as a podcaster with Corner Späti. We attempt to cover European politics from a left-wing and less serious perspective. We’ve been doing this for about 6 years now.

And now for the fifth time, you’ll be doing Gyrovision. Let’s start with the question I keep hearing, and will not work in a printed interview. How do you pronounce Gyrovision?

That is debated. One of Corner Späti’s co-hosts is Greek, and he gives out to me about pronouncing gyrovision with that hard English “G.” He’s informed me that it is actually pronounced “Eurovision.”

But I like calling it “geero-vision.” So, the official pronunciation of Gyrovision is with a hard G.

And what is Gyrovision?

When we started Corner Späti, we had a focus on Europe. And I’ve always felt that the unifying aspect of “European culture”––with heavy quotation marks––is actually Eurovision.

A lot of people on the right will say that it’s Philosophy and Christendom and Architecture and all that very dodgy stuff, when, in reality, I still think it’s Eurodance, and Cascada, and teenage binge drinking in front of your local rinky dink funfair. And Eurovision, I think, represents that quite well. I wanted to show my co-hosts Eurovision through my eyes.

We had to wait a year, because when we started the podcast in 2019, and BDS had called a boycott because Israel was hosting. And as much as I love Eurovision, it’s not more important than solidarity with the Palestinian people. The following year was the pandemic year, and we had to cancel last-minute.

Finally, in 2021, we started doing our own commentary on the Eurovision. That’s how Gyrovision started. We always made this joke that Gyro was the substitute word for a cheap knockoff version. I think the joke started originally as GyroDisney instead of EuroDisney, but then expanded to this.

Then last year, we did a boycott-friendly version. We try to make something as close to Eurovision as possible, without giving the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) any money or attention.

Before we talk about the boycott, there is a difference between Gyrovision and other comedic coverage of Eurovision in that you actually enjoy this shit. What is it about Eurovision that you like?

Part of it is definitely that I am Irish, and we have a, er, relationship with Eurovision. Ireland is currently, although probably not for long, joint first place with Sweden in most of the Eurovision wins of.

I have very nostalgic childhood memories of people in my street getting together to watch Eurovision. In Ireland, it would always be the first sunny day of the year. People would have barbecues in the garden, and then you’d go inside to watch the telly and see this contest happening.

People usually say it’s rubbish, but end up watching it regardless. It’s one of the most-watched live events in the world, more watched than the Super Bowl. Yet no one likes talking about it, which I find fascinating.

It scratches all the itches of music, pageantry, geography, and a fair amount of politics, even though they try to deny that’s there.

And yet most of the coverage talks less about the songs and more about who votes for whom and who doesn’t vote for whom.

People will say: “oh, Greece and Cyprus always vote for each other, it must be corruption.” And yeah, corruption has happened, especially with Azerbaijan, but it’s more because there’s a lot of Cypriots in Greece, and there’s a lot of Greek people in Cyprus who watch it at home.

You can also explain that with the UK and Ireland. The UK often gives points to Ireland, but Ireland doesn’t give points to the UK. People say “that must be the history,” but it’s more that there’s probably just more Irish people in the UK than there are British people in Ireland.

For a lot of countries, it’s very high stakes. This is the only international representation they have. A lot of countries like, famously Moldova, are not successful at sports. They take Eurovision very, very seriously, because it’s the only time Moldova is really represented on an international stage.

This means that they often have an outsized performance at the competition. I would describe Moldova’s characteristic at Eurovision as being drunk at the opening scene of a Wes Anderson movie. That’s the vibe their music usually gives. And it’s a lot of fun.

Every year, there’s always been some low level calls to boycott Eurovision because it features Israel. And these calls have been largely irrelevant. Last year, it was different. How did Gyrovision deal with the genocide?

A lot of these calls fall on deaf ears, because Eurovision has a very intense casual viewership. People usually just watch. Most people who watch Eurovision are watching it because there’s nothing else on telly that night.

There are super fans, but most people are very casually engaged, including the people who call for boycotts, who usually call for a boycott way too late. I usually see calls for kicking Israel out in March or April. But Eurovision 2025 was set in stone in September 2024. It’s a very slow moving and bureaucratic process.

The usual rule for BDS is they’ll only call for a boycott when Israel hosts Eurovision. As far as I understand, there isn’t an official boycott this year, probably because BDS is asking a lot of people right now or they think they are.

Last year, I knew a boycott was coming for obvious reasons. We listened to people saying what they wanted to do, and we said, “Fuck it. We can do this without the EBU getting any money”. We were able to get the songs in a way where EBU doesn’t get any money and we did the Eurovision ourselves. People voted. Obviously, we don’t include Israel and Azerbaijan for their various war crimes.

What are your criteria for who you don’t include? You exclude Israel and Azerbaijan. But you let people vote for Britain who are responsible for their fair share of war crimes. 

Israel and Azerbaijan have used Eurovision for soft power reasons. Last year, the Israeli president intervened to make sure that Israel went to the competition. They take this stuff very seriously.

I think people recognize that for all the crimes the various other countries commit, I don’t think they would care all that much if they weren’t in Eurovision anymore, but Israel really seems to care.

This is probably the only thing where Israel is really relevant on the international stage. It’s the only thing where they’re represented as a country. They’re not big World Cup players. I never hear anyone talk about Israel in the Olympics, because it’s usually just America and China getting all the medals.

Irish-South African professor Patrick Bond makes pretty much the same argument, saying that the sports boycott was really important for South Africa, but if you want to hit Israel you’ve got to hit Eurovision.

Yeah. And unfortunately, I see that cynically deployed by Eurovision super fans who feel a little bit guilty, but they still want to watch the Eurovision. They say that no-one’s calling for a FIFA boycott of Israeli clubs.

But this is not relevant. You have to direct your energy somewhere. And unfortunately, Eurovision is the place. All this can also be said for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is also not very relevant in various sports, but they are relevant in Eurovision.

Plus there is a call for a FIFA boycott, even if it won’t hit Israel as much. Coming back to the way in which Israel tries to weaponize Eurovision: can you say something about last year’s and this year’s Israeli entries?

Last year’s entry was Eden Golan. It was less about the artist and more about the song itself. The song was originally titled October Rain, and as soon as that title was leaked, everyone on Eurovision fan media was saying: “Oh, fuck no. We know exactly what this is”.

I believe that they were initially trying to provoke the European Broadcasting Union into kicking them out, like they had done with Belarus. Then, when it looked like Iceland was about to send a Palestinian musician, Israeli President Herzog went to the national broadcaster Kan and said, “Change the lyrics.” That’s how we got the song Hurricane. When it was performed, it was booed live at the arena.

Now, I boycotted last year. That was a very easy decision for me. I’ve had these politics around Israeli Apartheid for a very long time. But I also heard a lot of reports of people going to Eurovision 2024, saying: “Music is music. Let’s leave politics out of it”, then leaving the competition saying: “Oh God, fuck Israel.”

So it served as a weird, radicalizing event for a lot of people. There was also a lot of shenanigans backstage, which goes into a whole other set of drama.

This year there’s Yuval Raphael. She was at the Nova music festival on October 7th 2023. She is considered a survivor. Her song is called A New Day Will Dawn. And they’re very much trying this year to once more redirect the conversation onto Israeli victims of this conflict at the expense of Palestinian victims, of whom there are many more

That’s how the song is being instrumentalized this year. Both are trying to elicit sympathy from a European audience, which, from what I’ve seen, is failing. But unfortunately, institutions are just putting up with Israel’s presence in this competition.

But there is more of a vocal call for boycott, for example from over 150 former Eurovision contestants including an Irish winner. Do you get a sense that something is changing?

Unfortunately, I don’t think anything has changed. Last year, the comparison that was often made was that Russia was kicked out after their invasion of Ukraine. But the EBU only banned Russia after ten national broadcasters in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and I believe the Netherlands, threatened to pull out of the competition unless Russia was kicked out. It got a lot of institutional support.

Kicking Israel out has had a lot of support from fans, casual viewers, musicians, and people who are just staff at these events. Also songwriters, but who remembers the songwriters? Unfortunately, there’s still not enough institutional support.

If anything is changing, the unsung hero leading the charge is actually the Slovenian national broadcaster. They’re being the most vocal about this, and dragging in other countries like Spain, Norway, and Ireland.

The Slovenian national broadcaster started asking: “Why is Israel here? Can we talk about that? It doesn’t feel right.” The national broadcaster in Israel has broken a lot of EBU rules, and for this reason alone, they should be kicked out, regardless of any moral conversation about Palestine. They have been given a green light on a bunch of other rules that they’ve broken, such as independence from government propaganda, or promoting military things.

Do you have any tips for Eurovision? I know you’re very fond of the Australian entry.

This year I’m enjoying how horny the Australian entry is. I love how explicit you have to be when you do innuendo in a Eurovision Song. You understand that most of the audience don’t speak English as a first language, so you are very direct.

In Eurovision, these are 20 something songs that you will never listen to in your spare time. They do not reflect your actual music taste, but you are going to pick your favorite song from the bunch, and then you are going to start yelling at everyone who disagrees with you. It’s about getting very impassioned about something that does not matter and shouldn’t matter and should just be a bit of silly television.

How can people listen to songs and still observe the boycott?

There are two ways to do this. One, unfortunately, is Spotify. You can listen to all the songs in Eurovision this year but the money goes to the artists’ record label. And when we say money, we mean a fraction of a cent. We know how Spotify works. But that money does not go to the EBU.

The second way would be to use an online platform called Invidious, which is a no-tracking mirror of YouTube. None of the advertising revenue is counted by YouTube, because it hasn’t tracked you.

Let’s move on to Gyrovision. What will happen at Gyrovision and why should people go?

I and other hosts of Corner Späti will be doing commentary over the songs. We make our own opening ceremony. We make our own postcards, which is Eurovision terminology for the little bit that happens before the song plays showcasing the country.

We do all this to show you Europe through our somewhat sardonic lens. We do the usual stuff like dressing up, drinking, and dancing, all in the name of donating money to the Palestinian charities Heal Palestine and The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund.

It’s for people who don’t take Eurovision very seriously. As much as I am a fan, I learn about it so that I can just kind of joke along with it in a knowing manner. It should be a lot of fun.

And this year, Gyrovision isn’t on the day of Eurovision, it’s the day after. 

Yes, this year it is on the Sunday, because since we’re boycotting it doesn’t actually matter when we host it. It’s from 6pm till 10pm at Lark Berlin. Because it’s on Sunday, we are ending a little earlier.

You can come along and vote for your own songs, just like a real Eurovision, and we’ve got someone who’s made a little app for us to tally the votes.

Because it’s on the Sunday, people can also come to Palivision on Saturday, and we’re not competing like last year.

Absolutely, the feud that happened last year, we were just circling each other, staring daggers.

Is there anything else you want to say that we haven’t said,

Just that I am a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest, and I represent the type of person who could watch Eurovision again if the European Broadcasting Union actually kicked out Israel. I am the market they are missing out on.

I hear a lot of people talk about Eurovision from a perspective of “I never watched anyway”. I don’t think that’s the kind of voices that the EBU needs to hear. They need to hear from more people like me who say: I would watch, but you fucked up, so fix it.