Gina Carano criticized for tweets about QAnon, election & COVID-19 

Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

The former MMA fighter turned Hollywood actor is facing significant backlash for her social media posts on topics such as the 2020 presidential election, the coronavirus, and QAnon.

Once considered a mixed martial arts darling, Gina Carano has since transcended the sport and become a movie star with roles in some of Hollywood’s most popular franchises. However, Carono’s stardom may be threatened by her growing reputation as a conspiracy monger known for peddling theories about QAnon, the coronavirus pandemic, and, most recently, the 2020 presidential election.

The hashtag #FireGinaCarano was trending on social media over the weekend after Carano posted a series of anti-mask memes and retweeting posts denying the outcome of the presidential election.

Carano’s latest tweets are part of her longstanding tendency to peddle conspiracies on social media. In the past, she has posted about QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory that claims a cabal of elite pedophiles made up of Hollywood actors, Democrats, and other high-ranking officials is behind a global child sex-trafficking ring. The group asserts that Trump is currently fighting the cabal and is planning a day of reckoning known as “The Storm.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation has labeled the movement a “potential domestic terror threat.”

As the tweets demanding Carano’s resignation from The Mandalorian piled on, the former Strikeforce fighter announced that she had joined Parler, the social media network that has become popular with the far-right. Founded in 2018, Parler touts itself as the “premier free speech platform” and is partly funded by Rebekah Mercer, who has donated to entities such as Breitbart News and former White House strategist and white supremacist Steve Bannon.

This is not the first time that Carano has faced backlash for her tweets. Several months ago, Carano added “boop/bop/beep” to her Twitter name in a poor attempt to mock the use of preferred gender pronouns. Preferred gender pronouns are those pronouns that an individual prefers other people use when referring to them. The most common gender pronouns are “he, him, his” and “she, her, hers,” while transgender and gender nonconforming people may prefer to use pronouns that better reflect their identity, such as “they, them, theirs.”

When confronted at the time, Carano stated that she stands against “bullying, especially the most vulnerable & freedom to choose.” The “boop/bop/beep” reference has since been removed from her Twitter name.