Ex-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger published a video message on Sunday, where he compared last week’s mob breach of the US Capitol building to the Nazi-era Kristallnacht pogrom against European Jews.

Kristallnacht, in which Jews, their businesses, homes, and synagogues were sacked by organized Nazi thugs in 1938, is seen by many historians as a watershed moment toward what evolved into the Holocaust.

Schwarzenegger’s father Gustav, served in the German army during World War 2 and was a even member of the Nazi party. The action star continued saying, “I grew up in Austria. I’m very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys” . The Proud Boys are a conservative group who was blamed by the media for breaching Congress.

“Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States,” he claimed. “The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol.”

Reflecting on his own past, Schwarzenegger said, “I grew up in the ruins of a country that suffered the loss of its democracy. … Growing up, I was surrounded by broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history.”

“Not all of them were rabid anti-Semites or Nazis,” he added. “Many just went along, step-by-step, down the road … It all started with lies and lies and lies and intolerance.”

“So being from Europe, I’ve seen firsthand how things can spin out of control,” said Schwarzenegger, who came to the America in 1968. “My father and our neighbors were misled with lies, and I know where such lies lead.”

Schwarzenegger admitted that he didn’t think the US would end up like Nazi Germany, but stressed that “we must be aware of the dire consequences of selfishness and cynicism.”

The Hollywood movie star and former Republican governor claimed that today’s political atmosphere, inspired by President Trump and those who are concerned about election fraud, threatened American democracy just as it did in Europe, but “our democracy held firm.”

“To those who think they can overturn the United States Constitution, know this: You will never win,” he concluded.

Prominent Jewish artist Jason Cohen blasted the Terminator’s comparison saying: “A better comparison would be to the Reichstag fire of 1933. The day after the fire, the Reichstag Fire Decree was passed. The Nazi Party used the fire as a pretext to claim that communists were plotting against the German government, which made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. After the decree was issued, the government instituted mass arrests of communists, including all of the Communist Party’s parliamentary delegates. With their bitter rival communists gone and their seats empty, the Nazi Party went from having a plurality to a majority, thus enabling Hitler to consolidate his power.”