David J. Griffin, Rodin Eckenroth via Getty Images
- Sen. Ted Cruz blasted Disney for firing Gina Carano from the hit “Star Wars” spinoff “The Mandalorian.”
- Carano was sacked after she compared Jews in Nazi Germany to modern-day conservatives.
- Republicans have increasingly inserted themselves into the so-called cancel culture debate.
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Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas threw his support behind an actress fired by Disney after she compared Jews in Nazi Germany to contemporary American conservatives.
Gina Carano, a mixed martial artist who played the hard charging mercenary Cara Dune on “The Mandalorian,” was terminated by Lucasfilm on Wednesday after comparing modern-day Republicans to Jews persecuted during the Holocaust.
Lucasfilm is owned by Disney, where the hit “Star Wars” spinoff airs on Disney Plus.
Cruz backed Carano, a fellow Texan, in a tweet Thursday morning.
—Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 11, 2021
“Texan Gina Carano broke barriers in the Star Wars universe: not a princess, not a victim, not some emotionally tortured Jedi,” Cruz tweeted. “She played a woman who kicked ass & who girls looked up to. She was instrumental in making Star Wars fun again. Of course Disney canceled her.”
Republicans have increasingly inserted themselves into cultural debates over so-called cancel culture, defending those who have been sacked or otherwise faced consequences for their speech on social media.
In Carano's case, she was dropped by both Lucasfilm and her agency UTA after she made an Instagram post comparing the oppression and mass murder of Jews in Nazi Germany to modern-day conservatives in the US.
"Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children," Carano wrote in a since deleted Instagram caption.
"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," she continued. "How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"
Carano has been the subject of criticism for other incidents on social media, such as in September 2020 when she listed her gender pronouns in her Twitter bio as "boop/bop/beep," mimicking the practice of identifying one's gender identity to avoid misgendering.
Fans decried the gesture as "transphobic," and Carano did not apologize.
"Beep/bop/boop has zero to do with mocking trans people & [everything] to do with exposing the bullying mentality of the mob that has taken over the voices of many genuine causes," Carano tweeted in her defense at the time.
Carano also pushed election fraud conspiracy theories and mocked mask wearing in other social media posts.