"Cafferty's firing was wrong because his employer shouldn't have the right to fire him like that."
That is an excellent point. However, countries which do have political instruments that prevent workers from being disposable are not immune to this either.
This US-centric movement has resonated surprisingly strong in the media and social media in Germany, to the point that there were several protests which broke the rules designed to stem the pandemic. This wasn't by any means unique, as several countries in Western Europe were affected.
There's also a deep conflict running in German society between the left (which consider themselves the good guys) and the right (which are considered basically Nazis by the left). The definition of what it means to be right-wing is predictably expanding to encompass relatively minor gestures, comments or actions and the label of right-wing is then applied to more and more people. It is my impression that it's hard to fire someone for being right-wing though, since the courts have reversed such decisions, but there are social consequences.
In general AfD voters are considered right-wing and terrible people. But on the other hand, the AfD enjoyed quite some success in the elections, so what does this tell us about German society?
It seems to me that there's a big disconnect between the media and intellectual elites and the average Joe (or Fritz).
Furthermore, a society which is willing to ostracize a significant number of its own for holding specific opinions instead of working through its differences - like many Western European countries or the US wrongly do - is weakening itself. This is one of the paradoxes of this cancel culture: it's doing away with otherwise productive members of society for minor offenses which objectively do not cause harm. It's essentially a form of ideological cleansing.