Arnold Schwarzenegger shades neo-Nazis: Hate produces 'losers'

Former actor turned one-time Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) directly addressed neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups with a simple message Monday: recognize the error of your ways — or you will lose everything.

“There has never been a successful movement based on hate,” said Schwarzenegger in a 12-minute video uploaded to YouTube.

“Nazis? Losers. The Confederacy? Losers. The Apartheid movement? Losers. I don’t want you to be a loser. I don’t want you to be weak … 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.”

Schwarzenegger, who immigrated to the U.S. from Austria and visited the Auschwitz death camp last year as part of a reckoning process with his own father's involvement as a Brownshirt in the Nazi Party, said, "Let me tell you something. When I walked through that camp at Auschwitz, and I put myself in the shoes of those people herded into those gas chambers, it was horrifying."

He went on to say that those who cannot let go of their hatred will "die miserably."

“It’s easier to make excuses that the Jewish people conspired to hold you back then it is to admit that you just needed to work harder,” said Schwarzenegger. “Nobody who has chosen the easy path of hate has gotten to the end of the road and said, ‘What a life.’ No. They die as miserably as they lived.”

In recent years, neo-Nazi groups have become more active in America, dropping racist flyers in neighborhoods around the country and hanging virulently anti-Semitic banners from highway overpasses. Some have even plotted attacks on the power grid in recent months.