Arnold's Message to Antisemites

Arnold Schwarzenegger's powerful message

for those who have gone down a path of hate.

Berlin - Arnold Schwarzenegger published a 12-minute impassioned pep-talk against "rising hate and antisemitism all over the world" to his 1.3 million subscribers on Youtube on Monday. The video has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on youtube and has been trending on many news outlets. 

The actor and former governor of California encouraged his viewers to steer away from the trap of prejudice and hate. "I don't want to preach to the choir here," he said - and then goes on to directly address people who might be straying into antisemitic conspiracy theories and other forms of hate - "despite all my friends who might say, Arnold, don’t talk to those people. It’s not worth it. I don’t care what they say. I care about you. I think you’re worth it. I know nobody is perfect … I can understand how people can fall into a trap of prejudice and hate." But, he adds "I want you to know where that path ends."

For his father, who was a member of the Nazi Party's paramilitary known as brownshirts, it ended with a lifetime of guilt and anguish, he said, "You know, they drank to numb their pain... Their bodies were riddled with injuries and shrapnel from the eve of war, and their hearts and their minds were equally riddled with guilt. But besides the guilt and the injuries, they felt like losers."

Anti-semitism has been on a worrying upsurge in the US for the past couple of years. A recent study on antisemitic attitudes in the US by the Center for Antisemitism Research found that over 85 percent of Americans believe at least one anti-Jewish trope, as opposed to 61 percent found in 2019. Twenty percent of Americans believe six or more tropes, which is significantly more than the 11 percent that ADL found in 2019 and is the highest level measured in decades.

Similar concerns were also shared last week by Steven Spielberg on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he mentioned "not since Germany in the thirties have I witnessed antisemitism no longer lurking, but standing proud with hands on hips like Hitler and Mussolini, kind of daring us to defy it.”

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