On a video posted on Twitter on Sunday, which quickly attracted millions of views, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film star and former California governor, compared the Capitol riot last week to Kristallnacht, a riot in Germany in 1938 when Nazi-inspired mobs burned synagogues and destroyed property of Jewish stores.
Sitting at a table and flanked by the American and Californian flags, Schwarzenegger combined his growth experiences in Austria after World War II to what he was witnessing in the United States.
“Being from Europe, I saw firsthand how things can get out of hand,” he said, adding that while others may fear that something similar could happen in the United States, he didn’t think it would.
“I believe that we must be aware of the terrible consequences of selfishness and cynicism,” he warned.
Schwarzenegger remembers growing up surrounded by men who drank his “guilt for his participation in the most wicked regime in history”. Her father, like other people in the neighborhood, came home drunk once or twice a week and “screamed, hit us and scared my mom,” he said.
The painful memory, he said, was not something he had not shared publicly before, but he chose to do so to emphasize the “emotional pain” that these men experienced with what they saw or did.
“My father and our neighbors were also deceived with lies,” he said. “And I know where those lies lead.”
Mr. Schwarzenegger linked the pro-Trump crowd that invaded the Capitol to Kristallnacht, describing the attacks on Jews more than 80 years ago as carried out by the “Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys”.
Within hours, the 7-minute video drew nearly 10 million views on Twitter.
Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has long criticized President Trump, described him in the video as a “failed leader” and the “worst president of all time”. Noting the book written by former President John F. Kennedy called “Profiles on Courage”, Schwarzenegger added that several Republicans would never see their names in such a book because of what he called “their own weakness”.
“We need to hold people accountable who brought us to this unforgivable point,” he said.
In an appeal to bipartisanship, Mr. Schwarzenegger stressed the need for the nation’s healing. Referring to his 1982 film “Conan the Barbarian”, he took a sword from his table and said, “This is Conan’s sword”. A sword is tempered and reinforced by hitting it with a hammer and then heating and cooling it, he said.
“Our democracy is like the steel of that sword,” said Schwarzenegger. “The more seasoned it is, the stronger it becomes.”