No, Gina Carano was not fired for being conservative

MMA icon and actress Gina Carano was fired from the Disney+ show “The Mandalorian” earlier this week after sharing an anti-Semitic social media post.

On Wednesday, Lucasfilm announced that Carano, who played the popular Cara Dune, was no longer employed by the company.

“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a Lucasfilm spokesperson said. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

That post, which has since been deleted, compared the treatment of conservatives and Republicans to that of Jewish people during the Holocaust.

“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views”

as a jewish person, this is fucking vile and unnecessary. gina carano needs to be held accountable. the oppression my people have faced because of our religion and ethnicity is NOT the same as political disagreements. pic.twitter.com/ABuM8kO5hM

— sarah ︎ (@leiaswinterfell) February 10, 2021

Whether or not the Nazi Germany post meets a personal bar for antisemitism is something others can quibble over, but at the very least, it was a really dumb, incredibly offensive and totally thoughtless thing to share. This isn’t the first vile social media post Carano has made. In the past, Carano has tweeted election fraud claims, made transphobic jokes and mocked mask mandates.

Carano’s firing has set off a predictable firestorm, with the political right rending their garments over another perceived victim of “cancel culture,” claiming that she was fired for her conservative beliefs. But, Carano wasn’t fired for being conservative, unless conservatism is now directly aligned with antisemitism, transphobia and baseless conspiracy. Just because these views are “commonly held beliefs” within the Republican party these days doesn’t mean any employer can and should tolerate them. Simply labeling them as “conservative” doesn’t give anyone a pass.

Carano is the epitome of a right wing social media  s*** poster, engaging in the worst kind of baseless rhetoric and crying foul once she’s held accountable for it. In other posts, Carano has said that people shouldn’t expect to align politically with everyone they meet, yet that is hardly the issue here. What Carano shared weren’t mere differences of opinion over policy, but deeply offensive and factual incorrect statements that no one should stand behind. Just because Carano’s beliefs are gaining wider acceptance, doesn’t make them right and certainly doesn’t guarantee her a job.

“I am sending out a direct message of hope to everyone living in fear of cancellation by the totalitarian mob,” Carano said announcing a collaboration with Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Caller. “I have only just begun using my voice which is now freer than ever before, and I hope it inspires others to do the same. They can’t cancel us if we don’t let them.”

Carano can believe what she wants, she can join the legions of QAnon nuts who cleve onto whatever latest conspiracy is blowing up their Facebook feed, or dive deeper into narratives of imagined persecution, and she can post all of it on her social media accounts. She can label all of it as “conservatism,” but she can’t be surprised when her employer decides that enough is enough, and one too many crackpot things have come out of her mouth. Hollywood has tossed promising careers away for far less and Disney doesn’t need to waste any more time on such a mediocre actress.

Carano didn’t lose her job because she’s conservative. She got fired because the garbage coming out of her mouth shouldn’t be tolerated, not even in a tweet.