Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a stinging rebuke of Donald Trump on Sunday, comparing the riot at the US Capitol which the president incited to Kristallnacht, the night in November 1938 when Nazi thugs attacked Jewish Germans and their property, a harbinger of horrors to come.
He also compared American democracy to a weapon he wielded onscreen as Conan the Barbarian nearly 40 years ago, saying: “Our democracy is like the steel of this sword. The more it is tempered, the stronger it becomes.”
In a video posted to social media and scored to rousing classical music, the 73-year-old former Republican governor of California said he “would like to say a few words to my fellow Americans and to our friends around the world about the events of recent days”.
“I grew up in Austria and was very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass,” he said. “It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out [by] the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys [a quasi-fascist group of Trump supporters].” » | Martin Pengelly | Sunday, January 10, 2021
