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2024: Ten big moments when politics and culture collided
The line between entertainment and politics seems blurrier than ever these days, and not only because the most powerful leader in the world is once again going to be, among many other things, a former reality TV star.
The ubiquity of social media, the bitterness of political polarization, and the ferocity of the culture wars leaves almost no aspect of our societies untouched by politics these days.
Here’s a look at ten big moments from 2024 when popular culture shaped, or was shaped by, the biggest political stories of the year.
A “Childless Cat Lady” from Pennsylvania endorses Kamala Harris
In what was perhaps the biggest celebrity endorsement of the US presidential campaign, pop superstar Taylor Swift announced to her 280 million Instagram followers in mid September that she’d be voting for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
The endorsement from the year’s most streamed artist wasn’t exactly a surprise – Swift went for Biden in 2020 and has been outspoken on liberal and progressive issues for years. But it provided a shot in the arm for the Dems after a “cruel summer” largely defined by Joe Biden’s bruising and way-too-late withdrawal from the race, and Donald Trump’s seemingly-miraculous evasion of an assassin’s bullet.
Notably, Swift signed her post, which showed her holding one of her three cats, as “A childless cat lady.” That was a swipe at Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, who had earlier criticized women who choose to buck traditional gender roles by having cats but not kids.
It was one of the many ways that gender played into the election, with the Democrats emphasizing issues that were important to many women, such as protecting the right to abortion in a a post-Roe world, while the Trump camp, looking to draw the largely untapped support of young male voters, leaned into messages of macho masculinity and the idealization of more traditional gender roles.
Hulk Hogan rips his shirt off at the RNC
“Let Trumpamania run willlllld, brother!!!” Speaking of macho masculinity, in July, former pro-wrestler Hulk Hogan took the stage at the GOP convention, and in a fit of indignant rage about the attempted assassination of his “hero” Donald Trump, threw down his blazer and ripped off his tank top to reveal a Trump Vance shirt. The crowd went WILD.
It was the craziest on-stage moment at a GOP convention at least since that time Clint Eastwood lectured an empty chair in Tampa in 2012. And as pop culture clashups go, the 71-year old Hogan, his steroidal intensity undiminished by the ravages of age, was something of a time warp: a throwback to the over-the t0p world of 1980s and 1990s celebrity and pro-wrestling culture where Trump himself once held court.
But the mutual embrace between Donald Trump and the world of combat sports was part of his broader strategy to reach those crucial young male voters. He locked up the support of Dana White, the head of Ultimate Fighting Championship, and frequented podcasts popular with fans of mixed martial arts and boxing: perhaps no stop was more influential than his three hour sit-down with the biggest pod of all, The Joe Rogan Experience.In the end, it worked. Trump won over huge numbers of young male voters, particularly in Black and Latino communities – one of the keys to his victory.
Supper scene cooks up controversy at the Paris Olympics
It was the shot seen ‘round the world. The Paris Olympics four hour long opening ceremony in July briefly included a scene featuring more than a dozen dancers and drag queens gathered at a feast table, on either side of a woman in a halo-like medieval headdress. The feast, revealed under a large cloche, was a quasi-naked man painted blue on a bed of fruit.
Did it look a lot like an ultra-progressive remix of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper? Many Christians and church leaders thought so. It was a “disgrace,” according to Donald Trump. “The war on our faith and traditional values knows no bounds,” tweeted House Speaker Mike Johnson. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said it showed “the moral void of the West.” Even the pope got involved, with the Vatican denouncing the “offense to numerous Christians and .. believers of other religions.”
The ceremony’s artistic director later said, maybe a little improbably, that the reference was actually to a classical Dionysian feast and that the scene was meant to “talk about diversity.” The Olympic committee apologized for offending Christians.
But as ever, the battle lines of the ongoing culture war between conservatives and progressives were brightly drawn – and everyone on all sides saw the scene precisely as they wanted to.
South Korea forces North Korea to face the music
What is all that racket? Oh, it’s just the South Korean government using 20-foot tall speakers to blare K-pop hits across the Demilitarized Zone towards North Korea.
The ear-splitting move, made in June, was part of an escalating propaganda war between the two sides. Earlier, North Korea had begun sending hot air balloons filled with trash and excrement across the border to the South, in response to South Korean activist groups which had sent their own balloons northward laden with propaganda leaflets and USB thumb-drives full of soap operas and music banned in North Korea’s ultra-totalitarian society.
All of this loudly echoed a broader deterioration in relations between the Koreas this year. With talks on the nature of any potential denuclearization of the North long-stalled, Pyongyang finally renounced any prospect of reunification, blew up cross-border liaison offices, and cut all road connections with the South.
With North Korean Supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s pal Donald Trump returning to the White House next year, and South Korea’s politics in chaos after the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol, keep an eye on how both the politics, and the music, play across the Korean peninsula next year.Oscar winner refutes “hijacking of Jewishness” at the Oscars
Few global issues were, or remain, as polarizing in 2024 as the conflict in Gaza, and those tensions took center stage early in the year at the Oscars, when Director Jonathan Glazer won Best Picture for his film Zone of Interest, a portrayal of the banal family life of the Nazi official in charge of Auschwitz.
In his acceptance speech Glazer, who is Jewish, said his film was a testament to the evils of “dehumanization”, and that he “refuted” those who “hijack Jewishness and the Holocaust” to justify Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
The blowback was immediate. The Anti-Defamation League, pro-Israel leaders, and more than a thousand other Jewish film professionals blasted Glazer, with some accusing him of a “modern blood libel.” Just as surely, critics of Israel’s occupation and those calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas leapt to Glazer’s defense.
The episode underscored not only the deep divisions within America about the war in Gaza and the US relationship to Israel, but the political and generational splits within America’s Jewish community itself over this issue.French striker Kylian Mbappé gives an assist to President Macron
Look, we’re not going to touch the heated debate about who the best soccer player in the world is right now. But for a great number of people, it’s 25-year old French striker Kylian Mbappé, who plays for Real Madrid and is the captain of the French national team.
Over the summer, Mbappé took his star power from the pitch into politics, when he weighed in on France’s snap elections. After the far right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen won the first round on a platform calling for a fierce crackdown on immigration, Mbappé, who is of Cameroonian and Algerian descent, said “It’s catastrophic, we really hope that this will change and that everyone will mobilise to vote... and vote for the right side.”
He wasn’t the only member of Les Bleus to weigh in against Le Pen. Others did too. After all, the French soccer team itself has long been at the center of the fraught debate over French immigration and identity – perhaps never more so than when a majority non-white team won the World Cup in 2018.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition managed to eke out the second round, but only by concocting a strange bedfellows alliance with the far left. National Rally, meanwhile, rang up its best election result ever, setting up Le Pen for a decent shot on goal if she decides to run for president in the 2027 election.Gaza war takes center stage at Eurovision
Politics always – always – crashes the party at the annual summit of kitsch and crooning known as “Eurovision.” In recent years the conflicts in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh have both spilled onto the stage.
This year, it was Gaza. As 20-year old Israeli performer Eden Golan belted out her entry “Hurricane” she was immediately met with boos and cries of “Free Palestine!”
The song itself was controversial from the start. The contest’s organizers, who try their best to keep politics out of the affair, had rejected an earlier version called “October Rain,” an Israeli perspective on Hamas’ Oct. 7 2023 terror rampage, which killed more than 1,200 people.
By the time Eurovision rolled around seven months later, the IDF had visited massive destruction on Gaza, killing tens of thousands, displacing nearly all of the enclave’s two million residents, and drawing accusations of war crimes. The “Free Palestine” protest movement was in full flower, and it popped up at the Eurovision contest ahead of Golan’s performance.
In the end, “Hurricane” placed fifth in the overall contest. Like many Eurovision entries over the years, it is certain to be less memorable than the controversy that surrounded it.
Dead Austrian economist makes UFC cameo
In a surreal, instantly viral moment that even the shrewdest bookie could scarcely have predicted, Brazilian UFC fighter Renato Moicano in February gave a post-fight shoutout to… an influential school of 20th century European economists.
“If you care about your f***** country,” Moicano declared, his cheek still oozing blood after a bruising bout against France’s Benoit Saint Denis, “read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school motherf*****!”
Now, it’s not every day that a mixed martial artist runs your political economy book club, but Moicano’s comment reflected the rising popularity in Latin America of the so-called “Austrian school” economists, a fiercely laissez-faire group who despised even the merest hint of “socialism.”
Argentina’s “anarcho-libertarian” president Javier Milei, who has taken a “chainsaw” approach to government spending, is probably the world’s most prominent Austrian school disciple these days.
But Mises’ ideas are popular among a broader set of new right populists in the Americas and Europe who see themselves at war with both “globalism” and an overbearing administrative state.
“F*** all of these motherf****** globalists trying to push this politically corrupt agenda,” Moicano went on. “If you want to talk about politics and the economy, read ‘Democracy: The God that Failed by Hans-Hermann!’”A big fat Indian wedding stokes controversy
If you think weddings are getting crazy expensive these days, you’re absolutely right. In mid July, Anant Ambani, a son of India’s richest man, married his fiance Radhika Merchant, a pharma industry heir, in a months-long nuptial extravaganza that cost some $600 million in total.
The 2,000 person guest list for several pre-wedding parties and the event itself was a who’s who of the global political, fashion, and cultural elite: the Kardashians, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Indian PM Narendra Modi, two former UK prime ministers, the Jonas Brothers. There were private concerts by, among others, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and Pitbull.
Around the world, people followed the festivities, the outfits, the gossip online. And not all of them liked what they saw.
The over the top opulence of it all – and the chummy relationship between the country’s ultra-rich and its politicians – stoked criticism among those who pointed out that India is, after all, a country where some 200 million people languish in poverty, and just 1% of the country controls 40% of the wealth. To put things in perspective, at India’s current per capita income of $2,500, it would take an average person 240,000 years to pay for a wedding like this in cash.Honorary mention: your opinion.
Did we miss anything in this list that you’d have included? If so, let us know here and we may include it in an upcoming edition of the GZERO Daily.
Municipality workers remove debris from the streets after flooding in Sheikh Jalal district, Baghlan province, Afghanistan May 12, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Devastating floods, COVID reporter released, Catalonia votes, Swiss contestant wins Eurovision
315: At least 315 people in northern Afghanistan have died in severe floods that also injured over 1,600 others, wiped out thousands of homes, and devastated livestock herds that feed the region. Aid agencies expect chaos. It’s been a bad month for floods worldwide — similar inundations in southern Brazil and Kenya have killed hundreds in recent weeks.
4: Lawyer and journalist Zhang Zhan has been released from prison in China four years after being detained for her reporting on the government’s draconian response to the COVID-19 outbreak. In jail, Zhang’s health suffered severely, with her weight dropping to below 90 lbs at one point. Her former lawyer says Zhang will either be returned home or sent somewhere to do a few months of “soft prison” time while cloistered from the rest of the world.
9: Candidates from nine parties competed for seats in local elections in the wealthy, independence-leaning Spanish region of Catalonia on Sunday, and the Socialist candidate supported by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is expected to squeak out a win. If no party wins a majority outright, the Socialists will likely need to hammer together a coalition to maintain control.
2: Students walked out on two major commencement speakers this weekend. Dozens of Duke graduates turned their backs on comedian Jerry Seinfeld, and Virginia Commonwealth University grads gave the same treatment to Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In addition to the walkouts, several more campuses saw major demonstrations surrounding their commencement activities.
An Israeli delegation reacts to their advancing the ESC finale during the second semi-final of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest, in Malmo, Sweden, May 9, 2024.
Politics take center stage at Eurovision
As musicians from around the world prepare to represent their country in the Eurovision Song Contest, thousands of demonstrators waving Palestinian flags are flooding the host city of Malmö, Sweden, to protest Israel’s participation.
Politics are always present alongside the kitschy revelry, over-the-top costumes, and sometimes unpleasant song choices at Eurovision. But this year, amid growing protests against the war in Gaza, politics are taking center stage.
Israel’s entry, “Hurricane,” performed by 20-year-old Eden Golan, received boos and shouts of “Free Palestine” from the audience. The song was initially titled “October Rain” in reference to the Oct. 7 attack, but that ran afoul of the contest’s rules against politicized lyrics and both the name and some of the lyrics had to be changed. Israel qualified for the final round after its performance in the semifinals on Thursday.
Golan has a connection to two global conflicts. Until the Ukraine War broke out, she was a pop singer in Russia. Her father served as chairman of the board of directors at Sovcombank, one of Russia’s 13 “systemically important” credit institutions that later became the subject of international sanctions. Israeli-born Eden received death threats ahead of her performance at the semifinals.
The opposition to Israel’s participation in Eurovision has extended beyond the protesters outside the event. Artists from Sweden, Finland, and Iceland have called for a boycott.
Beyond Israel, Croatia’s representative, Baby Lasagna, came armed with a song about the brain drain plaguing Croatia as its youth leave the country for wealthier ones in the EU. It is the current favorite to win, with Ukraine close behind.
Lots of foreign traveler are seen at Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine in Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture on April 20, 2023. The number of tourists coming to Japan is increasing as the pandemic of new coronavirus COVID-19 has calmed down.
Hard Numbers: Foreign travel to Japan surges, Ethiopian diplomat expelled, Safari turns deadly, ABBA’s winning ‘Waterloo’
89: Japan’s weak yen is leading to a tourism surge, with foreign visitors jumping a whopping 89% in February — to 2.78 million people — compared to a year ago. Hotels, in turn, are fuller, and the day rates for stays are up roughly 25% since last year.
72: Ethiopia's ambassador has 72 hours to leave Somalia amid a spat over Ethiopian plans to build a naval base in the de facto autonomous region of Somaliland. Mogadishu is also closing two Ethiopian consulates and pulling its ambassador from Addis Ababa. Tensions between the two countries boiled over when Ethiopia offered possible recognition of Somaliland as part of the port deal, which Somalia sees as a move to annex part of Somalia to Ethiopia.
1: An 80-year-old American woman died while on a safari in Zambia this past weekend after a bull elephant charged at the vehicle she was in, flipping it. The tour company says the truck was blocked by the terrain and couldn’t get away from the agitated pachyderm. Last month, a similar attack took place in South Africa when a bull elephant lifted a 22-seat safari truck several times before letting it drop. There were no deaths reported in that incident.
50: It’s been 50 years to the day since ABBA won their first Eurovision song contest with “Waterloo.” Semifinal rounds for this year’s contest kick off next month, and, despite the competition's goal of staying apolitical, controversy over Israel's participation is already front and center.Noa Kirel from Israel performs during the grand final of the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool, Britain, May 13, 2023.
Could Israel be disqualified from Eurovision 2024?
The search is underway for representatives from each of the 37 countries participating in the 2024 Eurovision song contest. The competition’s slogan might be United by Music, but as always, politics are never far from the stage.
This year, the controversy concerns Israel. Calls are growing for the country to be kicked out over its assault on the Gaza Strip, which has drawn accusations of war crimes and genocide. Many are citing as a precedent the 2022 expulsion of Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Israel’s entry: 20 year oldEden Golan was selected after performing Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” to a hall of empty chairs, meant as a tribute to the Gaza hostages. Israel has been in Eurovision since the 1970s and has won four times — most recently in 2018.
Could Israel be expelled? Entries can be fined or disqualified for bringing politics onto the stage. But Israel’s expulsion is unlikely at this point. The final say rests with Eurovision officials, and so far they’re singing an evasive tune, saying, “Comparisons between wars and conflicts are complex and difficult and, as a nonpolitical media organization, not ours to make.”
What Eurovision means to Ukrainians at war
Where else will you find banana-inspired wolves, dubstep rapping astronauts, or earworms about vampires? It’s Eurovision, of course: the 70-year-old song contest that pits nations against each other in an annual spectacle of camp, kitsch, and catchy melodies.
But for Ukrainians – who have won the contest three times in the past 20 years – the contest is about something much more.
On GZERO Reports, we visit a secret Eurovision watch party outside of Kyiv, a drag party in New York City, and look at how Eurovision is more political than you – or those wolves, astronauts, and vampires – could imagine.
For the uninitiated, the colorful annual Eurovision Song Contest pits countries against each other in a spectacle of camp, kitsch, and catchy pop music. It’s like the Olympics meets American Idol meets Burning Man. Each country submits an original song, and the winner is chosen through a combination of audience and professional jury votes.
The European Broadcasting Union, which organizes Eurovision, says the contest isn’t political (they turned down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's request to speak at the finale), but in its almost 70-year history, politics have always found a way of creeping in.
Last Saturday’s Grand Finale was no exception. This year’s contest, held in Liverpool, England, was full of messages of unity and support for Ukraine, who could not host Eurovision after winning in 2022 because of the Russian invasion. GZERO traveled to two very different Eurovision watch parties—one in the heart of New York City and one in an undisclosed location on the outskirts of Kyiv—to see how politics and pop music come together for fans around the world.
"Just to see so much solidarity and so much diversity of thought and backgrounds embracing Ukraine through the power of music is very encouraging,” said Maxim Ibadov, the National Coordinator of RUSA LGBTQ+ and organizer of the NYC event, “Because Ukraine has beautiful culture and I’m so happy it’s being celebrated.”
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television, airing nationwide. Check local listings.
- Hard Numbers: German arms for Ukraine, Serbia rejects ‘thoughts and prayers,' deadly storm hits Myanmar and Bangladesh, Sweden sweeps Eurovision ›
- The Graphic Truth: Eurovision – beating swords into microphones, sort of ›
- Hard Numbers: Ukraine wins Eurovision, Somalia’s new prez, Venezuela woos investors, CDU victory ›
Eurovision winners
The Graphic Truth: Eurovision – beating swords into microphones, sort of
Eurovision – you either love it or you hate it. And if you love to do either, then this is your moment. Saturday marks the Grand Final of the 2023 edition of the song contest, which pits the nations of “Europe” against each other in an annual battle of song, spectacle, and kitsch. The event began with just seven countries in the 1950s as a way to bolster Western European unity and channel the continent’s nationalistic urges into a more cheerful kind of competition.
In the decades since, it’s expanded to nearly 40 nations – including some that aren’t geographically in Europe – and while it reliably produces dreadful earworms, it’s also turned up some real stars: Olivia Newton-John, ABBA, and Céline Dion, for example, all came up through Eurovision.
It’s also produced plenty of political intrigue: Moscow and Kyiv, for example, have traded darts over each other’s acts since 2014 (Ukraine has won Eurovision twice since Putin first invaded Ukraine that year), and while this year’s contest should’ve (by tradition) gone off in Ukraine, home of last year’s winners, it’s being held in Liverpool, England, instead because of the Russian invasion. Russia, of course, has been banned.
Here’s a look at which countries have won the most Eurovision finals over the years. Of these, only the Netherlands and France were part of the first competition, and Ukraine is the only country to have won three times in the 21st century.
Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine appear on stage after winning the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest in Turin, Italy.
Hard Numbers: Ukraine wins Eurovision, Somalia’s new prez, Venezuela woos investors, CDU victory
439: Ukraine won the popular Eurovision Song Contest in Italy thanks to a late surge of 439 fan votes from across the continent early Sunday. President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated the winner, vowing to hold next year's edition in the besieged city of Mariupol.
3: Somali lawmakers (finally!) elected Sunday a new president after three rounds of indirect voting, conducted in a Mogadishu airport hangar. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a former president who lost re-election in 2017, will get his old job back.
10: Venezuela plans to offer private investors stakes of up to 10% in multiple state-run companies that Caracas nationalized years ago in the name of socialism. With its economy still a shambles and under crippling US sanctions, the Maduro regime is desperate to attract foreign investment.
35.7: In a major upset for the ruling SPD party, the opposition CDU won 35.7% of the vote in Sunday's election in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state. Good news for the CDU, which governed the country for 16 years under former Chancellor Angela Merkel until it lost the 2021 federal election.