Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke out against last week’s assault on the U.S. Capitol, comparing the event to Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” in Nazi Germany in 1938. “The Broken windows were the windows of the U.S. Capitol, “Schwarzenegger said in a nearly eight-minute video posted on Twitter Sunday.
“But people not only broke the windows of the Capitol, they broke the ideas we took for granted. Not only did they break the doors of the building that housed American democracy,” Schwarzenegger said. “They stepped on the principles on which our country was founded.”
The Kristallnacht was a violent anti-Semitic attack carried out by Nazi sympathizers who destroyed Jewish-owned synagogues, schools, and businesses. It killed 91 Jews, while thousands more were sent to concentration camps. Nazi officials blamed Jews for the attack and fined the German Jewish community a billion Reichsmarks, or about $ 400 million, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“It was a night of massacre against 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 recalled the impact of the war on his father and others, whom he described as “broken men who drink the blame with their involvement in the most evil regime in history.”
“Not all of them were rabid anti-Semites or Nazis. Many went step by step down the road. They were the people next door,” Schwarzenegger said. He talked about his father, who said he would sometimes come home drunk and beat Schwarzenegger and his siblings, seemingly blamed for their involvement in World War II.
“They had physical shrapnel pain in the body and emotional pain from what they saw or did. It all started with lies, lies, lies and intolerance,” Schwarzenegger said. “So, coming from Europe, I’ve seen first-hand how things can get out of hand.”
“President Trump tried to overturn the results 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 were also fooled with lies and I know where these lies lead. President Trump is a failed leader.”
Schwarzenegger, a Republican himself, has frequently spoken out against Trump. This time, in his speech, he also assassinated his fellow Republicans, who he claimed were “accomplices of those who carried the banner of self-righteous insurrection to 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.” However, Schwarzenegger ended his statements strongly.
“Our democracy has been tempered by wars, injustices and insurrections. I think, as shocked as we are by the events of the last 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: “For those who think they can overthrow the United States Constitution, know this: you will never win.”