Arnold Schwarzenegger has released a YouTube video he made regarding the rise of antisemetism, in which he urged those who embrace it to “choose strength” and change their minds.
Arnold detailed his visit to Auschwitz last year, describing how moved he was by walking through the site where so many were executed. “The weight at your back … hits you heavier than any squat I’ve ever done,” the former bodybuilder said, trying to get people to put themselves in the shoes of those who died.
Arnold added, “I want to talk to the people out there who may have already stumbled onto the … wrong path … I want to talk to you if you … found yourself thinking about if anyone is inferior … because of their religion, or the color of their skin, or their gender,” he says.
“I’ve seen enough people throw away their futures for their hateful beliefs.”
The Austrian superstar detailed how his father, who was an officer fighting for Germany in the Second World War, was left “broken” after the conflict. “Besides the guilt and the injuries, they felt like losers, not only because they lost the war, but because they fell for a horrible loser ideology. They were lied to and misled into a path that led to misery,” he said.
“Hate is the easy path … But you won’t find success at the end of that road … It breaks you,” he insists.
Schwarzenegger noted, “There has never been a successful movement based on hate. Nazis? Losers. The Confederacy? Losers. The Apartheid movement? Losers … I don’t want you to be a loser.”
“You still have a chance to live a life of strength,” he implored, relating working on yourself with his struggles in the gym. “You have the greatest power of all, the power to change your own life.”
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