After Pipeaway published an exclusive investigation into subliminal messages embedded in Baby Lasagna’s live act at Basel’s Eurovision pre-show Arena Plus, the Swiss authorities have taken action, and not the subtle kind. The police have opened an official investigation and, as of today, all YouTube videos featuring Baby Lasagna’s performance have been geo-blocked from view in Switzerland.
YouTube removes content where necessary to comply with local lawsYouTube
As we first reported from St. Jakob-Park stadium – the site of the largest ESC Basel public viewing event – Croatian artist Baby Lasagna (real name Marko Purišić) took the stage on May 17th. But while the audience was swept up in the glittery chaos of Eurovision kitsch, a different show was playing out on the massive screens.
Hidden within the on-stage visuals, subliminal messages flashed for just a single frame each. Among the pixelated whispers: a call to fund jihad, complete with a crypto wallet address traced back to Islamic struggle action from over a decade ago.
Despite multiple inquiries to both Baby Lasagna and the City of Basel, the event’s organizer, no one stepped forward to explain how these digital Easter eggs made it onto the screen, or who planted them.
Now, YouTube videos showing the incident have vanished in Switzerland, blocked with little fanfare. Creators who uploaded footage from the stadium received a concise message: “We have received a legal complaint from a government entity regarding your content.”
Most of these uploaders had no idea their clips might contain something problematic. Pipeaway was the only international media outlet covering this story.
“YouTube removes content where necessary to comply with local laws”, the e-mail titled YouTube Video Blocked: Government Request said.
While the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) still juggles with old hot potatoes, including televote controversies and the never louder question of why is Israel in Eurovision, it seems the subliminal scandal poses fresh questions.
It’s not enough to just shift the responsibility to the City of Basel as an organizer of the event if the attendees (fans of Eurovision!) can so easily get exposed to something Swiss police considers dangerous enough to file an official takedown request.
After all, if this happens, we are not talking about just some fringe online conspiracy, but about a real-world hazard that demands answers.
This is one of the videos you cannot see anymore in Switzerland. All because of what happens at around 00:54, for a frame of a second!
What do Swiss laws say?
According to Article 260 of the Swiss Penal Code, anyone who supports a criminal or terrorist organization in its activities can face up to ten years in prison or a significant financial fine.
Additionally, a paragraph focused on the financing of terrorism says that “anyone who, intending to finance a criminal act aimed at intimidating a population or coercing a state or international organization into doing or refraining from doing something, collects or provides funds shall be liable to a custodial sentence of up to five years or to a monetary penalty”.
At this point, it’s still unclear where the Swiss police investigation is headed, or who exactly is under suspicion for the action that initiated the total pull-out request from YouTube on Swiss territory.
Is the Croatian musician, the City of Basel, or the technical team of Swiss national broadcaster SSR-SRG (which may have handled the arena’s video feeds) under investigation?
Pipeaway has reached out to the authorities for clarification and will update this story as soon as more information becomes available.
Between Vylan and villain – Switzerland deletes Lasagna
As the original article explained, the entire case is shrouded in mystery. If Baby Lasagna’s subliminal messages were an intentional artistic statement, why has the author not owned them? If the performance was hijacked, why haven’t the artist and the organizers come out to condemn it?
Instead, the first real move came not from the artist, nor the event hosts, but from Swiss authorities, who initiated YouTube takedowns of the performance across Switzerland. It feels less like censorship and more like an effort to drain the swamp of speculation – step one in figuring out what actually happened on that Basel stage.
Swiss YouTube block for Baby Lasagna arrives after British police started investigating Bob Vylan’s “Death to the IDF” and before Thompson, Croatia’s most controversial artist, hosts the largest concert in the world
The timeline offers more than coincidence. The performance took place just two days after Switzerland officially banned Hamas and its proxy groups – and in that light, the Swiss police appear unwilling to leave any potential provocations to chance.
However, the reaction of the authorities landed silently, while Europe was already buzzing about what should or shouldn’t be allowed on concert stages.
It all happened just after British police opened a criminal investigation into Bob Vylan’s performance at Glastonbury Festival, where he led crowds in chanting “Death, death to the IDF”.
Baby Lasagna’s Swiss YouTube ban also comes several days before his namesake, Marko Perković Thompson, Croatia’s most divisive musician, is expected to draw half a million fans to Zagreb’s Hippodrome in what should become the world’s largest paid concert. Thompson, who has a long track record of glorifying the fascist Ustaše regime, has been banned in several countries (including Switzerland) – yet Croatian authorities rarely act, despite the neo-Nazi salutes, symbols, and disturbing messages his shows often feature.
Before chanting “Death to the IDF” at Glastonbury Festival, English punk rapper Bob Vylan explained his not-at-all-subliminal message!
Lasagna-style layers of silence
Engaged musicians always had politically loud voices. Some use them for good, others against it.
Somewhere between Vylan and Thompson (and arguably miles apart from both), Baby Lasagna now floats in limbo: one of Croatia’s most successful Eurovision stars, yet oddly silent the moment one website asked what exactly had flashed beneath his feet, secretly served to 36,000 unsuspecting concert visitors.
Swiss police, not just geographically between Brits and Croats, for now, haven’t jumped into the anti-Semitic witch hunt targeting pro-Palestine performers like their UK colleagues did. Nor have they embraced the Croatian-style silence, where radical speech cloaks in “patriotic” banners.
For now, in the tradition of Helvetic neutrality, Switzerland has quietly limited public access to Baby Lasagna’s footage, claiming it doesn’t “comply with local law”.
Instead of just “punishing” YouTube uploaders who documented the public concert only to have it excluded from views in the host country of Eurovision, the authorities will have to say – clearly – which laws have been broken, and who is the culprit.
What do you think about the Swiss authorities taking down all YouTube videos featuring Baby Lasagna’s subliminal messages?
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