Washington: Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California and Hollywood action star, has issued a heartfelt and stinging criticism of outgoing US President Donald Trump, while comparing last week’s Capitol riots to Kristallnacht, the night the Nazis attacked the Jewish population in Germany in 1938.
In a video message posted on social media on Sunday, Austrian-born Schwarzenegger says the rampage was carried out by the “Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys” and he’s seen “first hand how things can spin out of control”.
“Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. It has shattered the ideals 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.”
He says that, for the first time, he is sharing the painful memories” of growing up among broken men who participated in the rampage, telling of how his father drank and “he would scream and hit us and scare my mother”, as would the neighbours because they were in pain for what “they saw or did”.
Read the article by Tim Loh in WAToday.