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Arnold Schwarzenegger during his video message
Photo: Ralf Müller / imago images / Photopress Müller
Arnold Schwarzenegger dealt with Donald Trump in an emotional video message after the storm on the Capitol - and warned of the dangers of extremism based on his personal family history.
Trump drove compatriots into a coup attempt "by misleading people with lies," said the former Republican governor of California and former Hollywood actor in the seven-minute Twitter video, which was made more than eight million times in the first few hours was played.
Trump had "failed" and would "go down in history as the bad president of all time." But soon Trump would "be as irrelevant as an old tweet."
"It all started with lies and lies and lies and intolerance"
The 73-year-old drew parallels between the attack on the US Congress building and the Nazi November pogrom of 1938 against the Jews, which he described as "Kristallnacht".
"Wednesday was broken glass day here in the US," said Schwarzenegger.
“But the mob didn't just break the Capitol windows.
He shattered ideas that we took for granted. "The attackers would have" trampled on the principles on which our country was founded. "
Then Schwarzenegger got personal.
The native Austrian said he grew up in the ruins of a country that was losing its democracy.
In his childhood he was surrounded by broken men who tried to "drink away" their guilt from the Second World War.
His own father came home drunk once or twice a week and then beat his family, Schwarzenegger said.
The neighbor did the same.
“They had physical pain from the shrapnel in their bodies and emotional pain from what they saw or done.
It all started with lies and lies and lies and intolerance. "
He knows that there are fears in his country and around the world that something like this could also happen in the United States, Schwarzenegger said.
But he does not believe this himself.
America will leave these dark days behind and emerge stronger from them.
The people now understood what could be lost.
Schwarzenegger called on his fellow citizens to unite in the fight for democracy: "We have to look beyond ourselves, our parties and our differences of opinion," said the former politician, who stood up for the Republicans himself, "and put democracy first."
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