Actress Gina Carano was fired from the cast of the popular Disney Plus-Star Wars spinoff series The Mandalorian on Wednesday after sharing a social media post that likened people in society today to Nazi supporters during the Holocaust.
Carano’s social media post in question went as follows:
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?”
Critics say that Carano’s social media post downplays the experience of Jews during the Holocaust. Others have also called the way the actress was treated a stark double standard, given that a slew of prominent liberals — from Democratic lawmakers, to mainstream media pundits, to Hollywood figures — have been likening their political adversaries to Nazis for years.
For instance, as Breitbart’s David Ng notes, “[I]n what appears to be a corporate double standard, her co-star Pedro Pascal has also conflated current politics with Nazi Germany and remains employed by the studio. The difference is that while Carano compared current Democratic policies to the Nazis, Pascal likened the Trump administration to Germany’s Third Reich.”
Here are 15 liberals who have compared former President Donald Trump, his supporters, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and conservatives to Nazis — but were never canceled as a result.
1. President Joe Biden
Last year, Biden compared then-President Trump to “a German Nazi propagandist,” according to a report by Politico.
“Trump is ‘sort of like Goebbels,’ Biden said, invoking the name of Joseph Goebbels, the mastermind of Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine. ‘You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge’ among voters,” the report said.
2. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has attacked the Trump administration’s immigration policies by claiming that the former president was running actual “concentration camps” on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Ocasio-Cortez later doubled down on her claims, declaring that she would never apologize for comparing detention facilities at the U.S. border with “concentration camps” in Nazi-occupied Europe.
3. Actor Robert De Niro
Last November, De Niro accused President Trump of using the same “playbook” as Nazi German-era dictator Adolf Hitler’s in his pitch to voters to make America great again.
“It’s the same playbook as Mussolini, as Hitler, as a dictator, wannabe dictators,” said De Niro. “It’s what they’re going to do for the people, make Germany great again, make Italy great again, make America great again.”
Watch below:
4. Donny Deutsch
Former MSNBC host Donny Deutsch has compared ICE to Nazis, stating that they “literally go to the streets” and “storm and show up and grab families and children.” Deutsch went on to say that illegal aliens in the U.S. are “running just like the Jews ran from the Nazis.”
In 2018, the MSNBC host also suggested that Trump supporters are no different than Nazi supporters. “If you vote for Trump, then you, the voter, you, not Donald Trump, are standing at the border, like Nazis,” said Deutsch, adding that “if you vote, you can no longer separate yourself” from the “evilness of Donald Trump.”
5. Actress Rosanna Arquette
Last month, the actress likened Trump to Hitler, proclaiming that he “did everything a dictator does.”
“Like Adolph Hitler, Trump is a fascist dictator he did everything a dictator does by the book,” tweeted Arquette. “Any person in office who stands by Trumps Nazi tactics should never hold office again this is a movement filled with violent and dangerous people.”
In November, the actress smeared tens of million of Americans, claiming that the GOP are “Nazi gestapo” that “blindly follow their insane unhinged leader and commit crimes against humanity.”
6. Actress Jane Fonda
The actress Jane Fonda has compared Trump’s passionate defense against false reportage by the establishment media to Hitler’s attacks on the German press.
“If you have read anything about the rise of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler you will see the parallels,” said Fonda in 2018. “Attacking the media is the first step and move toward fascism.”
7. HBO host Bill Maher
In 2016, Maher compared President Trump to Adolf Hitler by reciting a mock translation of one of Hitler’s speeches, using language quintessential of the way Trump sounded during his speeches on the campaign trail at the time.
“We’re going to make Germany great again, that I can tell you, believe me,” said Maher, reading the mock subtitles below a video of a Hitler speech. “Germany doesn’t win anymore. England, France, America, they’re laughing at us. The Treaty of Versailles? A terrible deal! And look, I love the Jews, nobody loves the Jews more than me, but folks, either we have a Fatherland or we don’t. So we’re going to have to build a camp, and I will make the Jews pay for it,” continued Maher. “When I’m done with them, they’ll be saying ‘Merry Christmas,’ that I can tell you.”
Watch below:
8. Singer and NBC’s The Voice star John Legend
After Trump won the 2016 election, Legend blasted the then-president-elect, stating that his “Hitler-like” rhetoric could turn the United States into Nazi Germany.
“I feel like it’s dangerous for us to be complacent,” the singer said. “It’s dangerous for us to think that it couldn’t happen to us like it happened to Germany in the ’30s and ’40s.”
9. CNN anchor Don Lemon
In 2019, CNN anchor Don Lemon suggested that Trump shouldn’t have a platform by comparing the former president to Hitler.
“Think about Hitler,” said Lemon. “Would you say that that person is allowed — let’s put it this way, if you could look back in history, would you say, ‘Well, I’m so glad that that person was allowed a platform so that they could spread their hate and propaganda and lies,’ or would you say, ‘It probably wasn’t the right thing to do to spread that’ because you knew in the moment that that was a bad person and they were doing bad things. Not only were they hurting people, they were killing people.”
Lemon’s fellow CNN anchor Chris Cuomo pushed back on his remarks, stating, “comparing anything to an extreme, like a Hitler, it weakens the argument, because you are now taking a guy who says things you don’t like and comparing him to a genocidal maniac.”
While the two disagreed on the issue, Lemon was never “canceled” for making the Nazi comparison.
Watch below
10. MSNBC host Joy Reid
That same year, MSNBC host Joy Reid pointed out that media coverage of Hitler was “benign” in the 1930s, implying that the media was making the same mistake with Trump, by not pushing back harder.
“I have this set of old New York Times front covers — to show how benign the coverage was, even in the 1930s, as the world was about to burn down in World War II,” said Reid. “And the just sort of benign things, you know, it’s like a tick of wanting to see world leaders — in that case of Germany — they just want to see them as normal, and I don’t know where that comes from.”
“And I think it wouldn’t be so if those leaders were not white men, I have to say,” added Reid. “White conservatives — there is a sense that conservatism is normal, and that white conservative men are the norm.”
11. Actor-comedian Louis C.K.
In 2016, Louis C.K. wrote a lengthy email to his fans, begging conservative voters not to be like “Germany in the ’30s” by voting for “Hitler” Donald Trump.
“Please stop it with voting for Trump,” wrote C.K. “It was funny for a little while. But the guy is Hitler. And by that I mean that we are being Germany in the ’30s. Do you think they saw the sh-t coming? Hitler was just some hilarious and refreshing dude with a weird comb over who would say anything at all.”
12. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC)
After the 2020 presidential election, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) compared Trump’s “refusal to concede” to “what Hitler did in Germany” in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
“I’m beginning to see what happened in Germany back in the 1930s,” said Clyburn. “I never thought that could happen in this country. How do you elect a person president, then all of a sudden you’re going to give him the authority to be dictator? That’s what Hitler did in Germany.”
Watch below:
13. Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke
In 2019, then-Democrat presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke compared the Trump administration to Nazi Germany in an interview with the Washington Post.
“I think sooner rather than later, a majority of Americans — including Republicans — are going to see Trump for who he is, and this administration for what it’s done,” said O’Rourke. “Outside of the Third Reich, give me another example of a Western leader who has called one people of one faith inherently defective or dangerous or disqualified from being successful in that country.”
14. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
That same year, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) likened the political moment that brought Trump to power to the rise of Hitler. “Americans elected an authoritarian, racist, anti-immigrant strongman to the nation’s highest office,” said Johnson, adding that Hitler “rode a wave of nationalism and anti-Semitism to power.”
“Replace anti-Semitism with ‘all Latinos crossing our borders are rapists, drug dealers and murderers.’ Does that sound familiar?” Johnson added.
15. Actor John Cusack
Last year, actor John Cusack compared President Trump to Hitler in an interview, stating, “Hitler sort of stole from the avant-garde left — he hated the message of the avant-garde left because it was anti-war, but he understood that politics was the new art and that art and politics were going to be infused. You can see Trump sort of doing the same thing.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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