(CU)_Former California governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger decried Wednesday’s pro-Trump mob attack on the US Capitol as an act hatred and likened the events to that of the Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, during which Nazis carried out a nightlong destruction of Jewish property in 1938.
“Wednesday was the ‘day of broken glass’ right here in the United States,” Schwarzenegger said in a video posted to Twitter on Sunday (Jan 10).
He added that the violent demonstrators did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. ” They shattered the ideas we took for granted. They did not just break down the doors of the building that housed American democracy. They trampled the very principles on which our country was founded”.
Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria in 1947, painted a grim image of the post-world war era adding that he grew up in the midst of “broken men drinking away their guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history”.
In a rare description of his childhood, the former actor said his father, who was a part of the military police in Austria, frequently came home drunk and would scream and hit his family, as did so many of his neighbours.
Hinting on some of the pro-Trump protestors who joined the violent demonstrations at the Capitol, Schwarzenegger went on to say that the Nazi sympathizers and enablers he lived around in Austria were not all “rabid anti-Semites and Nazis.” Instead, “Many just went along, step by step, down the road. They were the people next door.”
He also accused President Trump of seeking a coup by “misleading people with lies” through his baseless claims of election fraud. “My father and our neighbours were misled also with lies, and I knew where such lies lead,” he said.
The former governor of California referred to President Trump as “a failed leader”. “He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is that he soon will be as irrelevant as an old tweet,” he added.
In the video, which has been viewed more than 17 million times, Schwarzenegger described his fellow Republicans as “spinelessness”. “[…] they’re complicit with those who carried the flag of self-righteous insurrection into the Capitol,” he noted.
However, in the latter part of the video Schwarzenegger declared that America’s democracy held firm throughout the adversities. “America will come back from these dark days and shine our lights once again,” he said. “I believe, as shaken as we are by the events of recent days, we will come out stronger out because we now understand what can be lost.”
Finally, he encouraged all Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, to rally behind President-elect Joe Biden, noting that “if you (Biden) succeed, our nation succeeds”.
In his conclusion, he also warned those who were involved in Wednesday’s riots, saying, “To those who think they can overturn the United States Constitution, know this: You will never win”.
