Mike Baron Fights Back, Plans Suit Against Daily Kos (and More)
Scribe blasts site for dubbing 'Thin Blue Line,' 'Private American' racist
A single Tweet can have real-world repercussions.
Just ask Justine Sacco, whose career collapsed after one Africa-related joke that went horribly wrong.
So can a blog post.
Mike Baron @BloodyRedBaron visits us to talk about Private American, Nexus, the Punisher, Thin Blue Line, and his lawsuit against the @dailykos!https://t.co/hxK4GW5irz
— AACONS (@AACONS) January 22, 2023
Mike Baron, a veteran comic book writer and novelist, found that out after he was personally targeted by a Daily Kos post. Baron is the author of “Private American” and “Thin Blue Line,” graphic novels that tell stories that defy the progressive narrative.
“Private American” follows a Cuban-American fighting the drug cartels along the U.S./Mexican border. “Thin Blue Line” serves up a day in the life of a female cop trying to protect the mayor from hordes of far-Left protesters.
A Daily Kos blog post slammed both titles as racist without having read either. The post in question, which won’t be linked here but can be found easily via a Google search, can’t site actual racism in either tome but manufactures outrage with assumptions and leaps of logic.
The post may have done its job, though.
Shortly after it went live both Kickstarter and Crowdfundr pulled the title’s campaigns from their sites. That came on the heels of social media giants punishing the respective accounts to promote the titles.
BANNED: Twitter Suspends Mike Baron’s ‘Private American’ Account https://t.co/0tTw6UQWOD
— Bounding Into Comics (@BoundingComics) October 18, 2022
Like other Big Tech censorship campaigns, the parties in question couldn’t point to any specific ways the books clashed with their community guidelines. It’s likely the Daily Kos post was enough “evidence” to censor them, or Leftists used the post as a cudgel against the titles.
Now, Baron is punching back.
He’s started a new crowdfunding campaign, at freedom-friendlier GoFundMe, to pay for his lawsuit against Daily Kos and other, unmentioned parties.
Their false allegations of ‘racism’ and ‘bigotry’ were part of an organized effort by an indie comic publisher to cancel our Kickstarter and Crowdfundr fundraising campaigns where we had been accepting pre-orders from Mike’s readers for his latest graphic novel Private American.
The campaign quickly raised most of its goal amount (90 percent) since going live roughly a week ago.
This reporter read “Thin Blue Line” from cover to cover (“Private American” isn’t available yet). The graphic novel isn’t racist, bigoted or offensive in any way. It’s a story that mocks violent, far-Left protests and the parties that enable them.
That’s it.
The majority of the story’s villains are white.
The Eisner Award-winning Baron told Fox News that the opening pages of “Private American” find its vigilante hero protecting a Mexican migrant from a drug cartel member.
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Big Tech platforms find inconvenient stories like “Thin Blue Line” unacceptable, and they have the power to limit their reach (if not strangle their finances). It’s part of a larger, frightening trend across western culture in the 21st century.
Critics of pandemic restrictions found their voices silenced by the media and Big Tech. Comedians who tell jokes that target the “wrong” politicians or causes similarly are muted by digital giants.
Comic book artists who refuse to be “allies” to select causes struggle to find an audience, even when they blaze an independent trail in doing so.
Publishing giants like Marvel and D.C. Comics would never touch a story like “Private American.” Yet Baron and his collaborators still struggle to get their stories out.
Sadly, no mainstream comic book artists have rallied to Baron’s side to this reporter’s knowledge. His free speech rights matter, but because he tells stories that aren’t woke or progressive, artists who might otherwise have his back remain silent.
Fear runs entertainment. As we have seen, Big Tech has terrifying power. You go against leftist doctrine, you get punished. Heck, even Elon Musk is toeing the line now. Just ask “The Quartering” or Brittany Venti.
Not sure it’s even possible to restore freedom of speech at this point. The right doesn’t even seem to care that much.