The Airboy Freakout IS Censorship

Charles Cox |

Jul 8, 2015

If you aren’t caught up on the controversy over the second issue of Airboy, check out my previous article where I denounce the Airboy outrage.

[easyazon_image align=”center” height=”500″ identifier=”B010C4HWCM” locale=”US” src=”http://boundingintocomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/61jENRLhKaL1.jpg” tag=”bounintocomi-20″ width=”333″]

Recently some agitators have defended their tactics by claiming that bullying the publisher of [easyazon_link identifier=”B010C4HWCM” locale=”US” tag=”bounintocomi-20″]Airboy[/easyazon_link], Image, into pulling the comic from store shelves is not an act of censorship. This is patently absurd.

According to ACLU, censorship is:

…the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are “offensive,” happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.

The article linked above even quotes this definition, then proceeds to completely contradict it and still claim they are not engaging in censorship.

Since they seem to have such a hard time understanding such a basic concept, I’ll go ahead and spell it out for them: You are a private group. You are pressuring someone else to do something. That thing you want them to do is suppress a comic book (which is a set of images and words). You are doing this because you find it offensive.

On the off chance that the folks making this argument are not stupid, but are instead liars, here’s a bit of advice. If your tactic is so reprehensible that you cannot even call it by it’s real name, then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing it at all.