In the middle of March, former California governor and global action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger recorded a video that he said he hoped would serve as counterpropaganda for Russian citizens regarding the invasion of Ukraine. Schwarzenegger, who is incredibly popular in Russia, used his social media reach and global persona to share his personal childhood experience growing up around former Nazis and other defeated World War II Austrians to impart how devastating it was to the psyche to have been on the side of an “evil” regime.
There was optimism that Arnold could be successful in reaching his intended audience. For all of the censorship by Russian traditional media outlets as well as their tight hold on social media, Schwarzenegger’s social media accounts were some of the few feeds that official Russian outlets followed on applications like Twitter. Besides that reach, other popular social media feeds, including Telegram—arguably the most popular social media conduit in Russia—picked up the video translated into Russian, and boosted the signal. It was very likely that all of these leaks in the proverbial censorship dam could only be plugged so fast, with a lot of Schwarzenegger’s message getting through.
On Sunday, any question as to whether or not Schwarzenegger’s message got through was cleared up.
According to the Daily Beast, during Russian state TV Sunday night, host Vadim Gigin addressed the Schwarzenegger video, highlighting Schwarzenegger’s wealth and his privilege: “He, in California, will tell us, who live here … the truth?! That is their approach towards us.”
Other Russian celebrity personalities have been promoting the Putin line that this invasion of Ukraine is a Nazi-clearing exercise by Russia. Russian powerlifting champion Maryana Naumova wrote a piece calling Schwarzenegger’s position hypocritical regarding Ukraine and antisemitism.
Bandera, which seized power in Ukraine, destroys monuments to Soviet soldiers, the streets of Ukrainian cities are named after Nazi criminals, and a war was declared against the people of Donbass, who did not agree with the coup d'état, which in 8 years claimed more than 14 thousand lives of civilians alone. And the fact that Mr. Zelensky, as you say, is a Jew, did not help them. Nazism has no nationality, Nazism is not from the word "Germans". And Russophobia is no better than anti-Semitism.
Naumova isn’t wrong about Ukrainian antisemitism being a real thing—not unlike in Russia, or America for that matter—but she’s also not addressing the issue here. Regardless of your feelings about Vladimir Putin, no matter what or why he may have made this move or what exactly you think he hoped to gain from it, there is no way in the word “antisemitism” means much of anything in regards to Putin other than what it means to many powerful oligarchs: conspiracy theory fog in which to organize angry and scared citizens.
What is clear is that Schwarzenegger was heard in Russia and by enough Russians that state television felt compelled, or possibly were compelled, to respond. Like all world leaders, Putin has to reckon with the popular or unpopular opinions of his electorate, especially in regards to maintaining the control he clearly prefers to have.
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