Anti-hate protest

On Monday, Arnold Schwarzenegger posted another stunning YouTube public service video, this time trying to combat “the rising hate and antisemitism we’ve seen all over the world.” A year ago, Schwarzenegger posted a YouTube video aimed at Russian citizens and soldiers, urging them to reject Russian lies and propaganda about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to push for ending Russia’s illegal war. This time, Arnold points out that he recently toured the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, where 1.1 million men, women and children, most of them Jewish, were murdered. He said that, at Auschwitz, “the weight on your back hits you at the very beginning … and it never goes away.”

Then Arnold points out that “‘Never Again’ is the rallying cry of all the people who fight to prevent another Holocaust,” and asks, “how do we stop this from ever happening again?” However, Schwarzenegger says his video is not intended “to talk to those people” who already seek to combat hate, or “to preach to the choir.” Rather:

I want to talk to the people out there who might have already stumbled into the wrong direction, into the wrong path. I want to talk to you 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 if you’ve found yourself thinking about anyone as inferior and out to get you because of their religion, or the color of their skin, or their gender.

Schwarzenegger goes on to cite his own personal and family history, indicating, “I’ve seen enough people throw away their futures for hateful beliefs.” He then references his father, a Nazi Austrian soldier in World War II:

I’ve talked a lot about my father, and the broken men that I was surrounded by when I grew up in Austria after the Second World War…. But besides their guilt and their injuries, they felt like losers, not only because they lost the war, but also because they fell for a horrible, loser ideology. 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. [emphasis added]

GOP House Speaker battle looked like this

Republicans don’t know how to govern effectively, but they do know how to grab the media spotlight. This was demonstrated during the recent Republican battle for U.S. House Speaker. After narrowly winning the House majority in the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP’s first task in the new year was to elect a Speaker. They failed miserably at this job, requiring a historic 15 votes before finally electing Kevin McCarthy.

But what seemed to get everyone’s attention were the 20 or so Republican House representatives-elect, many of whom are members of the so-called “Freedom Caucus,” who battled against McCarthy’s speakership, and at least one who fought on McCarthy’s side. The members who seemed to be on camera or in front of microphones all the time especially included Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Others on hand to a slightly lesser extent were familiar names such as Lauren Boebert and Jim (“Gym”) Jordan, so nicknamed because of his alleged involvement in a sexual abuse scandal involving wrestlers at Ohio State University. We’re not going to mention these names again in this post. Such representatives are known more for being superficial blowhards who say outrageous things rather than for the often dull but crucial work of legislating.

In short order, the GOP House Speaker election became about Republican media stars rather than about policy and substance. Such camera-hogging tactics worked, as McCarthy reportedly had to make numerous concessions to these members in order to secure their votes. What we call the GOP Civil War, also known as Republicans in Disarray, was on full, ugly display. But we already saw how a media celebrity made it into the White House six years ago, and the disastrous results that followed. The last thing we should do is feed that shallow, destructive process again by focusing our full attention on those Republican media hustlers.