Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke out against last week’s attack on the US Capitol, comparing the event to Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” in Nazi Germany in 1938. “The broken glass was the windows of the U.S. capital, “Schwarzenegger said in a nearly eight-minute-long video posted on Twitter Sunday.
“But the mob not only broke the windows of the Capitol, but they shattered the ideas we take for granted. They not only broke down the doors of the building that houses American democracy,” Schwarzenegger said. “They have trampled on the principles on which our country was founded.”
Kristallnacht was a violent anti-Semitic attack carried out by Nazi sympathizers that destroyed synagogues, schools and Jewish businesses. This resulted in the deaths of 91 Jews, while thousands of others were sent to concentration camps. According to the American Holocaust Memorial Museum, Nazi officials blamed Jews for the attack and fined the German Jewish community one billion Reichsmarks, or about $ 400 million.
“It was an evening of rioting against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys,” Schwarzenegger explained. The actor was born in Austria in 1947 just two years after the end of World War II. He recalls the impact of the war on his father and others, whom he described as ‘broken men drinking away their guilt with their participation in the worst regime in history’.
“Not everyone was rabid anti-Semites or Nazis. Many just walked step by step along the road. They were the people next door,” Schwarzenegger said. He started about his father, who he said would sometimes come home drunk and beat Schwarzenegger and his siblings, apparently with guilt over his participation in World War II.
“They had physical pain because of the shrapnel in their bodies and in emotional pain because of what they saw or did. It all started with lies, lies and lies and intolerance,” Schwarzenegger said. “So I come from Europe and have seen first hand how things can get out of hand.”
“President Trump tried to overturn the outcome of an election and a fair election. He sought a coup by deceiving people with lies,” the “Terminator” star said. “My father and our neighbors have also been deceived with lies, and I know where such lies lead. President Trump is a failed leader.”
Schwarzenegger, a Republican himself, regularly opposed him. Trump expressed. This time in his speech, he also slammed his fellow Republicans, who he said were “sympathetic to those who carried the flag of self-righteous rebellion in the Capitol”.
He said Trump would be remembered as the worst president of the United States and soon “as irrelevant as an old tweet.” Schwarzenegger, however, concluded his remarks on a high note.
“Our democracy has been tempered by wars, injustices and insurgencies. I believe that we, just as shaken by the events of recent days, will come out stronger because we now understand what can be lost,” he said.
He also has a message for those who have attacked the Capitol: “To those who think they can overthrow the United States Constitution, know this: You will never win.”