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.
