UFC President Dana White responded to Disney firing Gina Carano on Saturday night after UFC 258.
Disney fired Carano due to her political beliefs and then attempted to gin up a hate mob by implying she was anti-Semitic.
A Disney spokesman announced Carano was no longer working with the company via a statement.
The statement reads, “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future.”
“Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable,” it concluded.
The post in question was a screenshot of a post made by warriorpriestgympodcast. Carano shared it to her Instagram stories.
It reads, “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children.”
It then features a quote that reads, “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 is clearly warning about hating other people, and is no way anti-Semitic.
White responded to the firing after UFC 258. He stated, “Leave her alone. We make mistakes. We all make mistakes.”
He continued, “For everybody to go in on her… I love how Ariel Helwani made it all about him. It was all about him, such a douche.”
Dana White, regarding Gina Carano, says leave @ginacarano alone & calls Ariel Helwani a Douche #UFC258 pic.twitter.com/CZPcZk0nY0
— Helen Yee (@HelenYeeSports) February 12, 2021
Helwani is an ESPN reporter who covers mixed martial arts and UFC.
In a post to his Instagram he stated, “Obviously I am very disappointed in what she posted. To be honest I haven’t agreed with a lot of the things she has posted over the past year.”
He would then disingenuously state, “This last post, essentially comparing being a Republican in America, or having a certain political view, to being a Jew in Nazi Germany during World War 2 is asinine.”
The post makes no mention of Republicans whatsoever. It only mentions hating someone for their political views.
Nevertheless, he continued, “It is an absolutely crazy comparison to make and is completely insensitive. To think that Jewish people and other minorities as well, not just Jews, but in this particular post Jews were the ones discussed, had to hide in attics and in gutters and had to be separated from their families and murdered six million of them.”
He also stated, “To compare that to what is going on in this country is just a very tone deaf analogy to make, to put it mildly.”
What do you make of White’s comments about Carano and him calling out Helwani?