Conservatives Start #CancelDisneyPlus Campaign After Gina Carano Fired Off ‘The Mandalorian’
Gina Carano was fired from the “Star Wars” Disney+ series “The Mandalorian” after she posted on Instagram that being a Republican in America is pretty much the same thing as being a Jew in Nazi Germany. And, predictably, conservatives are pretty mad about it, to the point where some have gotten on board with a #CancelDisneyPlus campaign on Twitter.
The idea behind this push is that conservatives say Disney fired Carano for her political beliefs. But that’s not true. The actual reason is that Carano’s Instagram post was “abhorrent,” as Disney described it in a statement.
Judge for yourself:
“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,” Carano wrote.
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It’s a false comparison, since your political beliefs cannot be equated with an ethnicity. One is something you’re born with and can’t help. The other is something you choose. And so, more broadly, people being annoyed with you because of your political views is not the same as being murdered because of the family you were born into.
But this is a false equivalence that conservatives have been making for a long time.
The backlash to Carano’s firing didn’t begin with a hashtag. It started with some far-right Twitter pundits like Dave Rubin and former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch.
Disney has cancelled @ginacarano, so I’m cancelling my @disneyplus. We need to stop giving these people our money and we must build new franchises.
Gina, if you’d like to come on the show to discuss anything let me know. pic.twitter.com/c2SSAjjdyu
– Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) February 11, 2021
Barely anyone spoke up for @ginacarano
when cancel culture cultists harassed her nonstop over her lack of twitter bio pronouns; this emboldened the cult so they began losing their minds over literally any and everything she posted anywhere. https://t.co/HqcdqEE1nX
– Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) February 11, 2021
It’s not clear who started the #CancelDisneyPlus hashtag, but conservative Twitter guy Jack Posobiec — best known for very loudly and very falsely claiming Disney added anti-Trump scenes to “Rogue One” during reshoots — has been pushing it pretty hard and posting images of the hashtag’s ranking in Twitter’s trending topics.
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But for the most part, #CancelDisneyPlus has been taken away from those defending Carano. Instead, if you search the hashtag on Twitter you’ll be greeted by just as many people mocking it as there are embracing the idea.
And many of those folks are pointing out the irony of these folks, who so often rail against so-called “cancel culture” of once again engaging in the thing they’re complaining about while they complain about it. See below a sample.
99% of the people in the #canceldisneyplus tag say they're going to cancel, but you know damn well they're still gonna be watching the next season of the show anyway pic.twitter.com/nkHvqbdv6e
— clarissa (@caperclaw) February 11, 2021
LOL #CancelDisneyPlus TRENDING awww boohoo
pic.twitter.com/lb13ZB0RUW
— cat (@catiaaa_) February 11, 2021
"I hate cancel culture so let's #CancelDisneyPlus" pic.twitter.com/mHrgr3AlA4
— ιт'ѕ-α мє, 𝟪𝟨𝟩-𝟧𝟥♡𝟫 (@JustJennyFlynn) February 11, 2021
Carano, by the way, has quite a history of such social media posts. She’s caught plenty of flack in the past for being transphobic and pushing conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the 2020 presidential election.
Conservatives tried something similar last summer with Netflix in response to the movie “Cuties,” but it didn’t seem to make much of an impact — the streaming service had its biggest year of growth ever in 2020.
*Related stories from TheWrap:*
Gina Carano Dropped From 'The Mandalorian' After 'Abhorrent' Social Media Posts
Will Luke Skywalker Show Up Again on 'The Mandalorian' or Other 'Star Wars' Shows?
'The Mandalorian': That CGI Character Appearance Was Really Weird
