- Former California Republican Party Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday called Republican Party members “cowards” after the US Capitol siege last week.
- In a lengthy video posted on Twitter, the actor and politician likened the insurrection in Washington, DC, to the rise of Nazi Germany, attacking the Republicans who made Trump’s baseless allegations about the 2020 elections possible.
- Schwarzenegger also spoke about the abuse his father faced as a child and compared democracy in the United States to the sword of this 1982 film “Conan the Barbarian”.
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In a long video shared on Twitter on Sunday, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor and former Republican governor of California, condemned his own party members as “cowards” and compared the US Capitol insurrection last week with the increase in the Nazism in Germany.
“I grew up in Austria very aware of Kristallnacht or the Broken Glass Night,” said Schwarzenegger, 73. “It was a night of violence against the Jews in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys.”
Kristallnacht took place in November 1938 and involved the deaths of approximately 100 Jews and the destruction of Jewish businesses, synagogues, schools and houses.
The Proud Boys are an extremist “fraternity” classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group has been associated with acts of violence in recent years, as Rachel E. Greenspan of Insider previously reported. The group denies that it is a white supremacist organization, although experts have said that its ideologies align with white supremacy.
“Wednesday was the day of the broken glass right here in the United States,” said Schwarzenegger, who was governor of California from 2003 to 2011. “The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol, but the crowd was not shattered. Capitol windows. They destroyed ideas that we thought were right. “
—Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021
At least five people died after the January 6 uprising on the United States Capitol. Trump supporters stormed the building while lawmakers were inside, dominating the Capitol Police after Trump’s speech at a “Stop Theft” rally, where he repeated baseless claims about the 2020 election.
Schwarzenegger, known for films that include “Terminator” and “Commando”, spoke about growing up in post-World War II Austria, which he described as “the ruins of a country that has lost its democracy”.
“I was surrounded by destroyed men drinking their guilt for their participation in the most wicked regime in history,” he said, opening up about the abuse he faced at the hands of his father as a child.
“My father came home drunk once or twice a week, shouted, hit us and scared my mother,” he said. “I did not fully blame him because our neighbor was doing the same thing to his family.
“I heard it with my own ears and saw it with my own eyes,” he added. “They felt physical pain from the splinters in their bodies and emotional pain from what they saw or did. It started with lies, lies, lies and intolerance.”
Read More: Secret service experts are speculating in group chats about how Trump could be removed from the White House if he doesn’t move on the day of his inauguration.
Schwarzenegger called Trump a “failed leader” and said the president would be remembered as the worst American president in history.
“President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election,” he said, referring to Trump’s refusal to grant the race for a month and his failed attempts to nullify his defeat. “And a fair election. He sought a coup by deceiving people with lies. My father and our neighbors were also deceived with lies and I know where those lies lead.”
He also referred to former President John F. Kennedy’s 1956 book “Profiles in Courage”, in which the former president profiled eight United States senators. Schwarzenegger said that many of his “cowardly” Republican Party colleagues could never come up with such a book due to his continued support for Trump.
Several lawmakers, namely, the Republicans Sens. Ted Cruz from Texas and Josh Hawley from Missouri led the charge against certifying Biden’s victory over baseless allegations of widespread electoral fraud, even after Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol due to the claims of Trump and his allies for months. .
“We need public servants who serve something greater than their own power or their own party,” he said. “We need public servants who live up to higher ideals – the ideals on which this country was founded.”
Near the end of the nearly eight-minute clip, Schwarzenegger brought the sword from his 1983 film “Conan The Barbarian” to serve as a metaphor for US Democracy, saying that like a sword, Democracy only gets stronger as is seasoned.