Arnold Schwarzenegger is speaking out against anti-Semitism.
Following a recent visit to Auschwitz, a concentration camp from Nazi Germany where over 1.1 million Jewish people were killed, the former governor of California posted a message to his YouTube channel about the rising rates of anti-Semitic hatred.
"If you've heard some conspiracies about Jewish people, or people of any race, or gender, or orientation, and thought, 'That makes sense to me,' I want to talk to you," Schwarzenegger said. "If you found yourself thinking about anyone is inferior and out to get you because of their religion or the color of their skin or their gender. I don't know the road that has brought you here, but I've seen enough people throw away their futures for hateful beliefs."
Schwarzenegger then opened up about his father, a "broken man" who was a member of the Nazi Party. While millions of Jewish people lost their lives in the Holocaust, Schwarzenegger also said that the paths of Nazis also "ended in misery."
"Besides the guilt and the injuries, they felt like losers. Not only because they lost the war, but also because fell for a horrible, loser ideology," he said. "They were lied to and misled into a path that ended in misery ... They bought into the idea that the only way to make their lives better was to make other lives worse."
He added: "It is the path of the weak ... There has never been a successful movement based on hate."
As a former bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger compared mental health to physical health through a weight-lifting metaphor, encouraging those stuck in extremist rabbit holes to reflect and work on themselves.
"Your mind and your character are no different than your body and your muscles. If you want to grow as a person, you really have to make friends with pain," he said, continuing, "You will have to force your brain to think in new ways. You may lose some friends who want to hold onto their weak beliefs, but as you pull yourself away from that anger and that hate, eventually, you will start to feel empowered."
Schwarzenegger said: "You will realize you have the greatest power of all — the power to change your own life. You will be stronger than you've ever known."
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