Russia’s exiled opposition wants voters at polling stations at noon on the main day of the Duma elections. Its new video borrows from a 1971 American ad against the Vietnam War.
Actor Nikita Kukushkin, who condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and left the country, has recorded a video supporting the “Noon for a Peaceful Russia” campaign, which Ilya Yashin and several other Russian opposition figures in exile are promoting. They are urging Russians to turn out at polling stations at noon on September 20 — the third and main day of voting in the State Duma elections — as a legal way to register their opposition to the war.
Yashin and Kukushkin posted the video, titled “Ya voyna” (“I Am War”), on their social media accounts on September 18, the first day of the Duma elections. In it, Kukushkin says:
I am war. Help me kill. All you have to do is nothing. Don’t protest. Don’t talk about me. Don’t follow the news. Don’t help the people who have lost their homes. Don’t support the people defending themselves. Say everyone’s to blame. Everyone except the czar. Have a latte at Patriarch’s Ponds. Go to VK Fest. Keep living as though buildings aren’t burning, people aren’t dying, lives aren’t being destroyed around you. Do me a favor: Don’t even think about me. I am war. Help me kill.
He is dressed entirely in black. At the end of the video, a tear runs down his cheek as his face twists into a sinister smile.
The video is an homage to a 1971 American public service ad opposing the Vietnam War. It featured actor Henry Fonda, speaking directly to the camera: “I am war. Help me kill. You don’t have to do anything. Don’t protest. Don’t write your congressman. In fact, do me a favor: Don’t even think about me. I am war. Help me kill.”
The ad was part of the antiwar campaign “Help Unsell the War.” Its name refers to stripping war of its appealing image. Ira Nerken, a 20-year-old Yale student, came up with the campaign after watching a CBS documentary about how the Pentagon used public relations to push its own views on war and peace.
Nerken decided the same methods could make war unpopular. He contacted the head of a New York advertising agency, who recruited hundreds of other advertising professionals to work on the campaign for free. The result was 125 posters and more than 60 antiwar ads, which ran on local U.S. television and radio stations. The major broadcast networks refused to air them.
Clips of Henry Fonda from the “Help Unsell the War” campaign
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Time magazine called the “Help Unsell the War” campaign a new and inventive form of antiwar protest, but a somewhat belated one — by 1971, most Americans already opposed the Vietnam War. In 1973, eight years after entering the war, the United States withdrew its troops from Vietnam.
The «Help Unsell the War» campaign has recently drawn renewed attention on social media. Meduza posted about it on its Instagram account.
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