Gina Carano, who plays Cara Dune on the hit Star Wars TV franchise The Mandalorian (Cara Dune is the former shock trooper from the Rebel Alliance who fought against the Galactic Empire in the Galactic Civil War and helped establish the New Republic – DI), is officially gone from the Star Wars universe because she used the H-word in what the Cancel Culture deemed an inappropriate manner.
A spokesperson for Lucasfilm, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is a business segment of The Walt Disney Company, said that Carano was not currently employed by them and they had “no plans for her to be in the future.” And then the same spokesperson revealed: “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Carano was also dropped by her agency, UTA, over the controversy.
Turns out the actress and former mixed martial artist enraged many Cancel Culture folks, who quickly enlisted behind the #FireGinaCarano standard because she is pro-trump (not a safe place to be these days, not even in northwestern Georgia), and because she tweeted the following (I can’t embed her tweet as is because she chose to illustrate it with a horrifying documentary image of a semi-clad elderly Jewish woman being taunted by little Nazi youths on the street – and we are a family newspaper).
Here’s what she posted on social media:
“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?”
Borrowing from the history of the Holocaust is always a risky business, but Cancel Culture’s “off with her head” response only proves that Carano had a point. The idea that anyone in America is fired for what they think and say – short of crying Fire in a crowded theater (remember, we used to have those?) – is as anti-American as they come.
And she wasn’t so off the mark.
Carano is not new to criticism for her views on social and political issues. In August 2020, she was attacked for blocking users that supported Black Lives Matter on Twitter. She denied that her motive was racism and called her critics cowards and bullies. She was accused of transphobia (not tolerating the sexually ambivalent) when she added “beep/bop/boop” to her profile online, obviously making fun of the trans.
Carano also caught hell for being anti-mask in the midst of the Corona pandemic, and supported wholeheartedly former President Trump’s voter fraud claims – all of which may suggest a willingness to promote unpopular views, but does any of it amount to a fireable offense?
Or, to paraphrase something, Carrie Fisher, as Princess Leia told Harrison Ford as Han Solo in one of their cherished last scenes in Episode VII, following an on and off-screen relationship that began in 1977: “You know, no matter how much we fought, I’ve always hated watching you leave.”
But the folks at the Lucasfilm press office don’t watch much Star Wars.