On Wednesday night, Disney announced that the company had cut ties with Mandalorian actress Gina Carano following outrage over her Instagram post comparing cancel culture to the Holocaust. Yet Pedro Pascal, the lead actor in The Mandalorian, also made an offensive and politically-charged Holocaust comparison, and it seems Disney has not taken any action in his case.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a Lucasfilm spokesperson said in a statement. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
In December, Lucasfilm and Disney announced the new show Rangers of the New Republic, a spinoff of The Mandalorian that seemed tailor-made for Carano’s character, Cara Dune, a former Rebel trooper who had become a marshall for the New Republic. While the Lucasfilm statement suggested that the company was not exactly firing Carano, it seems her social media posts cost her the logical follow-up role for The Mandalorian. UTA, Carano’s talent agency, also dumped her.
A Twitter mob had condemned Carano for multiple allegedly offensive comments. The outrage appears to have begun last September. Facing increasing harassment from transgender activists, Carano mocked the idea of including pronouns in her Twitter bio. “They’re mad cuz I won’t put pronouns in my bio to show my support for trans lives,” she tweeted. “After months of harassing me in every way. I decided to put 3 VERY controversial words in my bio.. beep/bop/boop.”
“I’m not against trans lives at all,” the actress clarified. “They need to find less abusive representation.”
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Indeed, the pro-transgender mob often harasses women who refuse to adopt the transgender orthodoxy. The mob has come for British mom Caroline Farrow, unleashing rape and death threats against her. The mob has repeatedly harassed J.K. Rowling for wrongthink, condemning her for “liking” a tweet.
More recently, the Twitter mob attacked Carano for mocking California’s COVID-19 response with a meme of a person wearing multiple cloth masks with the caption, “Meanwhile in California.”
Yet one post, in particular, drew the most ire. In an Instagram “story” — a post that disappears shortly after it appears — Carano compared cancel culture to the Holocaust.
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children,” the post read. “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?”
The post reportedly originated on a different Instagram account — so Carano did not write those words. Even so, the actress should not have shared the post. While cancel culture can get ugly, there is a crucial distinction between targeting someone for his or her Jewish ancestry and targeting someone for his or her political views. Holocaust comparisons like this truly are offensive and deserve opprobrium.
Yet if Disney and Lucasfilm decided to fire Carano for this offensive Holocaust comparison, the companies should also take a closer look at Pedro Pascal. The star of The Mandalorian also posted an offensive Holocaust comparison.
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In the summer of 2018, when Democrats demonized President Donald Trump for putting “kids in cages” by sharing photos of children put in cages during the Obama administration, Pascal explicitly compared the “kids in cages” claim to the Holocaust. He shared two images with the hashtag “ThisisAmerica.”
The first image featured Jews behind barbed wire in a Nazi concentration camp, with the caption, “Germany, 1944.” The second image seemed to show children in cages at the U.S.-Mexico border with the caption, “America, 2018.”
Yet the second image does not come from the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, it isn’t even one of the infamous photos of “kids in cages” for which Democrats blamed Trump even though those photos dated back to 2014 and the Obama administration. Rather, Pascal’s photo traces back to the newspaper Iraq Today, which presented that photo as proof of Israel detaining Palestinian kids in prisons back in April 2015.
Even if the photo had been genuine, it is extremely offensive to compare the temporary detaining of migrant children with the imprisonment and extermination of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. Whatever the evils of the Obama/Trump policy, it is a far cry from Auschwitz, and any person with a lick of sense can understand that.
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If Disney and Lucasfilm will part ways with Carano for an offensive Holocaust comparison, why are they keeping Pedro Pascal? If the standard is offensive Holocaust comparisons, Pascal should also be disqualified.
Disney did not respond to PJ Media’s request for comment by press time.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), a coalition including more than 1,500 Orthodox rabbis, condemned Disney’s double standard. He compared it to the double standard of Democrats who rushed to condemn Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for anti-Semitic comments she made a few years ago but who refused to condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other Democrats for spreading a “blood libel” against Israel mere weeks back.
“Disney is following a dangerous pattern that we have seen repeatedly from the progressive Left, more and more often in recent months,” Menken told PJ Media. “They claim to be fighting anti-Semitism while using it as a partisan weapon. When it is condemned on only one side, that enables it to grow and flourish on the other. So in fact, what they are doing is more harmful than doing nothing at all.”
Either Disney should apply this standard equally and part ways with Pedro Pascal, or the company should reconsider parting ways with Carano.
Companies should not rush to fire people due to cancel culture mobs. Instead, they should act like adults, bringing in people like Carano and Pascal for a conversation so they can explain their controversial comments or apologize for them. If companies bow to cancel culture mobs before hearing out their employees, they only embolden the mob mentality.
As a huge fan of The Mandalorian, I would much rather see Disney work out its differences with Carano and keep her on for Rangers of the New Republic, which will be considerably less interesting without her. I would also like to see Disney hold Pedro Pascal to account for his offensive Holocaust comparison while keeping him on as Din Djarin, a role he plays perfectly.
Many Americans are calling for users to “Cancel Disney Plus,” and this movement should make Disney realize that its double standard here is noxious. Rather than canceling Disney Plus, however, angry fans should pressure Disney and Lucasfilm to relent and bring Gina Carano back. Perhaps pointing out Pedro Pascal’s Holocaust comparison will help that effort.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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