Backed by Elon Musk, a Fired ‘Mandalorian’ Star, Gina Carano, Sues Disney, Claiming It Persecutes Conservatives

Billionaire Elon Musk is bankrolling actor Gina Carano’s lawsuit against Disney, which fired the star of “The Mandalorian” in 2021 over a series of social media posts that culminated in a post appearing to liken being a Republican to being Jewish during the Holocaust.Ms. Carano, who is a trained martial artist, played the mercenary Cara Dune in the first two seasons of “The Mandalorian,” which is the biggest hit on Disney+ and a core part of its streaming strategy. Despite Cara Dune being one of the top-billed characters and the only prominent woman in the cast, Disney fired Ms. Carano due to her social media activity, citing the Holocaust posting as the actionable behavior. Ms. Carano denies she intended to compare Republicans to Holocaust victims.In her Musk-backed suit against Disney and a subsidiary, Lucasfilm, she is seeking only $75,000 in damages but is asking the court to force Disney to reinstate her.In a tweet Tuesday, Mr. Musk appeared to offer the same financial backing to anyone else, saying, “If you were discriminated against by Disney or its subsidiaries (ABC, ESPN, Marvel, etc), just reply to this post to receive legal support.”Ms. Carano’s 2021 Twitter posts drew immediate criticism. “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” Ms. Carano wrote according to Variety. “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.”In the conclusion of her posts, Ms. Carano wrote: “How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”By the time she posted those comments, Ms. Carano had already drawn criticism. She had posted an image the prior year reading: “Breaking news — Democratic government leaders now recommends we all wear blindfolds along with masks so we can’t see what’s really going on.”Prior to her anti-mask post, she appeared to endorse President Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was illegitimate, saying, “We need to clean up the election process so we are not left feeling the way we do today.”Ms. Carano had also been accused of mocking transgender people by putting “boop/bop/beep” in the pronouns slot in her bio on what was Twitter, calling social media users who asked her to add pronouns to her bio “abusive.” Ms. Carano also appeared to endorse a negative social media post about Pedro Pascal, who plays the Mandalorian.Ms. Carano’s Holocaust reference appears to have given Disney an opening to fire her after months of social media posts landing her in headlines. On the same day of the post, Lucasfilm as well as the powerful talent agency that had represented Ms. Caraon, UTA, dropped her. Lucasfilm explained in a statement that “her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” This is not the first time Disney has fired a conservative for objectionable behavior on social media. In 2018, the “Roseanne” creator, Roseanne Barr, was fired for a racist tweet about a senior advisor to President Obama, Valerie Jarrett.When replying to a tweet alleging that Ms. Jarrett had helped cover up alleged wrongdoing in the Obama administration, Ms. Barr wrote of Ms. Jarrett, who is a biracial woman: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” In her new civil suit over the issue, which employs familiar language from the “Star Wars” canon, Ms. Carano claims that she was wrongfully terminated “because she dared voice her own opinions” about how being a conservative is similar to being Jewish during the Holocaust.“A short time ago in a galaxy not so far away, Defendants made it clear that only one orthodoxy in thought, speech, or action was acceptable in their empire, and that those who dared to question or failed to fully comply would not be tolerated,” the suit reads.The suit goes on to claim that Ms. Carano “stood up to the online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology.”In a tweet Tuesday, Ms. Carano denied comparing Republicans to Jewish people in the Holocaust and also claimed: “I was being hunted down from everything I posted to every post I liked.”“Were my questions about masks, lockdowns & forced vaccines ok to ask & push the subject into the light? Should we have been allowed to publicly discuss those topics at that time without being harassed or censored? Absolutely,” Ms. Carano wrote.Ms. Carano went on to disclose that she was contacted by lawyers hired by Mr. Musk “a few months ago” and that these attorneys “believe whole-heartedly” in her case.Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Sun.

Backed by Elon Musk, a Fired ‘Mandalorian’ Star, Gina Carano, Sues Disney, Claiming It Persecutes Conservatives

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