Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke out against last week’s attack on the Capitol and compared the event to Kristallnacht, the “Night of the Broken Glass” in Nazi Germany in 1938. “The broken glass were the windows. from the United States Capitol, ”Schwarzenegger said in a nearly eight-minute video posted to Twitter on Sunday.
“But the mob didn’t just destroy the windows of the Capitol, they destroyed the ideas that we took for granted. They didn’t just break the doors of the building where American democracy lived,” Schwarzenegger said. “They trampled upon 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. It resulted in the death of 91 Jews, while thousands of others were sent to concentration camps. Nazi officials blamed the Jews for the attack and fined the German Jewish community one billion Reichsmarks, or about $ 400 million, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“It was a night of frenzy against the Jews in 1938 carried out by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys,” explained Schwarzenegger. The actor was born in Austria in 1947, just two years after the end of the Second World War. He recalled the impact of the war on his father and others, whom he described as “broken men who drank away their guilt for participating in the most evil regime in history.”
“They weren’t all rabid anti-Semites or Nazis. Many just went down the road step by step. They were the neighbors’ people,” Schwarzenegger said. He opened up about his father, who he said sometimes came home drunk and hit Schwarzenegger and his siblings, apparently through guilt about his participation in World War II.
“They were in physical pain from the shrapnel in their bodies and emotional pain from what they saw or did. It all started with lies, and lies, and lies, and bigotry,” Schwarzenegger said. “So being from Europe, I’ve seen firsthand how things can get out of hand.”
“President Trump tried to reverse the results of an election and fair elections. He sought a coup by deceiving people with lies,” said the “Terminator” star. “My father and our neighbors were also deceived with lies, and I know where such lies lead. President Trump is a failed leader.”
Schwarzenegger, a Republican himself, has often spoken out against Mr. Trump. This time, in his speech, he also dismissed his fellow Republicans, who he claimed were “complicit in those flying the flag of the self-righteous uprising into the Capitol.”
He said Trump will be remembered as the worst president in the United States and will soon be “as irrelevant as an old tweet.” Schwarzenegger, however, ended his comments on a high note.
“Our democracy has been tempered by wars, injustices and insurrections. I believe that, as shocked as we are at the events of the past few days, we will come out stronger because we now understand what can be lost,” he said.
He also had a message for those who attacked the Capitol: “To those who think they can overthrow the US Constitution, know this: you will never win.”