Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger doubled down on his comparison to the January 6 Capitol riot to Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” which launched the Holocaust in 1938.
Schwarzenegger refused to back down from the comparison, which smeared millions of Trump supporters during an interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.
The leftist Hollywood star first made the comparison in the wake of the aftermath of the Capitol riot in 2021
Schwarzenegger cited his Nazi father while justifying his comparison of the two events.
The actor believes the common thread was that charismatic leaders misled people into doing bad things.
However, President Donald Trump told protesters to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol, which Schwarzenegger failed even to acknowledge.
The U.S. Holocaust Museum notes that Kristallnacht was “a series of pogroms against the Jewish population in Germany and recently incorporated territories.”
Dozens, if not hundreds, Jews were killed as Nazi activists destroyed Jewish-owned storefronts (hence the name “Kristallnacht,” for the broken glass on the streets) as synagogues were set on fire.
Jews began being persecuted by the Nazi regime following the event.
While Kristallnacht launched a wave of arrests and deportations of Jews, they were already subject to discrimination within Germany, which ended in mass murder after Germany launched World War II nine months later.
However, despite Schwarzenegger comparing Kristallnacht to the January 6 riot, it was a political event confined to the U.S. Capitol, in which only one person was killed.
The event also coincided with a peaceful protest aimed at pressuring Congress to do what Democrats had asked it to do, namely, refuse to certify the presidential vote of the Electoral College and send the decision back to the states.
The January 6 protest was not motivated by bigotry and did not trigger nationwide violence or pogroms by Republicans, unlike the Black Lives Matter anti-police riots which came before it.
As The Guardian notes:
On the night of November 9 1938, the Nazi government coordinated a wave of attacks in Germany and Austria on synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses, and homes.
This was Kristallnacht – the night of broken glass. Over two days, some 90 Jews were killed in an orgy of violence, while around 30,000 Jewish males were rounded up for deportation to concentration camps. Over 1,000 synagogues were burned or damaged.
The following day, the paper carried a number of reports and pictures about the attacks, including the news that anti-Jew laws were to be introduced in Germany.
There was a piece about the ‘Aryanisation‘ of Jewish property as well as a chilling interview with a Manchester woman who had been caught up in the violence and arrests.
Breitbart noted that Schwarzenegger has previously faced questions about his father’s Nazi past.
“There was a kind of schizophrenic behavior that my brother and I witnessed at home,” Schwarzenegger said. “There was the kind father, and other times when my father would come home drunk at three in the morning, and he would be screaming.”
“We would wake up and, all of a sudden, our hearts were pounding because we knew that meant that he could, at any given time, strike my mother or go crazy. So there was the kind of strange violence.”
READ: Arnold Schwarzenegger: Christians Who Claim Heaven Is Real Are “F**ing Liars”
I don’t take political advice from someone who has been in the U.S FIFTY EFFING YEARS and STILL CAN’T SPEAK ENGLISH.
In what universe is this true?
In Arnold’s non-existant Universe. My husband taught high school science some years ago. When he taught anatomy, he used the picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Grey’s Anatomy book to teach his kids, who thought it was hilarious. Arnold is still a laughing stock in our household.