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Today’s blacklisted American: Comic book writer slandered and then canceled because of the slanders

Mike Baron's Private American, banned

They’re coming for you next: Long established comic book writer Mike Baron and his projects have now been blacklisted from a variety of sites, including having his most recent Kickstarter starter campaign shutdown, because of slanderous social media comments as well as a defamatory article on Daily Kos.

After a scathing article from a Daily Kos mouthpiece, Baron’s colleagues and fans realized they could not find his campaign on Kickstarter. The post smeared “Thin Blue Line” – a story about two police officers riding out a long night of rioting – along with “Private American.” The author, a person named Starr Mignon, called the comic a “diatribe of racist propaganda” and “stochastic terrorism disguised as a funny book.”

Prior to Kickstarter shutting his campaign down, it had also been banned from Twitter, as well as shadow-banned on Indiegogo.

A detailed blow-by-blow description of the slanderous attacks, based on no knowledge of these works, as well as the cowardly blackballing by others in response to those attacks, can be found here. This writer, who was helping Baron’s campaign, notes the following:

In what amounts to an unprovoked hit piece, a frequent contributor to the website going by the name of Starr Mignon wrote a screed entitled “Punisher Creator Mike Baron Releases Another Racist AF Comic Book.” Not only did the article claim that an Eisner winning comic writer was writing a “domestic terrorist handbook,” she compared the comic (that she has not even read) to “The Turner Diaries” and “Mien Kampf.” The article also claims Baron’s previous graphic novel “Thin Blue Line” was a propaganda comic that told the story “about vigilante police officers who ‘have to’ go on a killing spree in black communities.“

As proof that Mignon has never read the “Thin Blue Line” graphic novel, the story is about an Hispanic single mom police officer. Her partner is black. Their job is protecting the town’s mayor during the riots. Nor has the writer read “Private American.” Only the creative team, our legal counsel, and a few members of the press have. [emphasis in original]

Baron has already put Daily Kos on notice that if it did not remove the article and issue a blunt retraction, it would be included in his lawsuit for defamation.

Since none of Baron’s accusers had actually read the comic books in question, nor did the editors at Daily Kos, there was no way they could make the accusations they did based on any knowledge. I also expect that when a jury compares those accusations with the actual comic books, the jury will find that the accusations were lies and slanders.

That Kickstarter and others immediately accepted the accusations, however, is the real horror, because it has become the standard of our time. If someone on the left makes an accusation of bigotry or racism, it is immediately accepted and acted on. No one ever does any due diligence to check its veracity. Instead, the accusation itself — false as these things always are — becomes the evidence itself, and the accused gets blackballed.

Even if Daily Kos and Kickstarter back off soon, I hope Baron pursues this legally. He has a clear and solid case, and could even end up owning Daily Kos before all is done.

Finally, if you have any interest in comic books (and even if you do not), you might want to check out Baron’s new project at www.theprivateamerican.com as well as the project’s presently active fund-raising campaigns at Indiegogo and Crowdfundr.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

9 comments

  • wayne

    The Underground Comix Movement
    https://youtu.be/Q3wBqzg8bs0
    13:08

  • Col Beausabre

    Anonymous accusations are the ABSOLUTE HEIGHT OF COWARDNESS. To borrow from one of my favorite films, it’s an 11 on a 1 to 10 scale

  • pzatchok

    Starr Mignon = Morning star

    Who morning star is I have no idea.

  • sippin_bourbon

    Pzatchok, everything I find says mignon means small, dainty, delicate or cute.

    You may be thinking of “matin”.

  • wayne

    If anyone wants to contact Starr:
    https://www.discordiamerchandising.com/contact.html
    She’s got her own little grift-machine going.

  • Milt

    Lying and slander are what progressive Jahadists like Ms. Mignon do, and they are called “the People of the Lie” for good reason. As for those who willingly believe and perpetuate the lies, check out this piece on the role of stupidity in our society:

    https://bigthink.com/thinking/bonhoeffers-theory-stupidity-evil/

    As the author of this essay observes:

    “Debating an idiot is like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.”

    “[T]he stupid person is a slippery opponent. They will not be beaten by debate or open to reason. What’s more, when the stupid person has their back against the wall — when they’re confronted with facts that cannot be refuted — they snap and lash out.” (Picture AOC and her friends having meltdowns in front of the rest of Congress.)

    Most people on the left who read this post will automatically assume that its author is talking about *conservatives* — how could they believe otherwise since they know that they are the “smart” people who want to fight racism, promote equity, and save the planet? Indeed, the entire subtext of left wing media — and PBS / NPR in particular — is that their viewers / listeners are better and smarter than the people who don’t have All Things Considered / Weekend Edition pledge drive coffee mugs on their desks.

    The biggest of the left’s Big Lies is that conservative precepts and principles are completely unsupported either by reason or historical experience, and they should be accorded no standing in any kind of debate about government policy or what might constitute a good society. And, if you don’t agree with this, you are “stupid” and filled with hate. Only after having a “come to Marx” moment (cf., St. Paul redirected on the Road to Serfdom), it seems, can one have a conversation with the smart people who know what is best for you.

    So how do you reason with pigeons?

  • Cotour

    “So how do you reason with pigeons?”

    You don’t, you eat them.

  • pzatchok

    Star Mignon is an anagram of Morning Star

    I doubt either is her real name.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/25/1980613/-AntiFa-is-NOT-a-movement-of-Anarchists-or-Communists

    The fact her email is a gmail account sort of indicates she does not want someone finding her real name and email.

    I will waste no more google foo on her.

  • Boobah

    Arguing on the internet is a spectator sport. That is, you’re not trying to convince your opponent*; you’re trying to sway the spectators. And it’s a cumulative effect; maybe this time they only notice that the stupid person crapped on the board, and next time they notice the tantrum, and only figure out why they did that instead of arguing their obviously correct point the time after that.

    * Your opponent has publicly taken a stance on the issue, and even if they didn’t have a pre-existing stake in the issue that was rationalized into this stance, by this point they’ve invested their name into it. They’ve already made their mind up.

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