Income tax helps, but rich people have assets and securities, not salaries.

Taxing home property is a wealth tax on the middle class akin to taxing the stock holdings of the rich.

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This distribution is a direct consequence of property taxes on domiciles and the taxation of essential costs of living like groceries and transportation.

If the zombies who perpetrate and enjoy this shit were extirpated the world would improve immediately. There’s no reason to allow animal torturers roam this planet’s surface.

But this challenges his tankie narrative that only totalitarianism can defeat “the bourgeoise.”

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One of those 3 judges is a traitor to democracy.

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Russia’s favorite propaganda is to claim that democracy is impossible because state violence is universal. They don’t deny their own wrongdoing (the way China does): they embrace it with whataboutism.

Saying “all states are authoritarian” is meaningless. Of course all statehood is based in violence. Yet clearly citizens of Taiwan and China have different relationships with their governments.

To whit, I have no rights in China. They could disappear me for this one comment.

Tankies defend Russian and Chinese dictatorships in particular. Interestingly, they don’t defend (and even condemn) other dictatorships. This is a feature of their tribalistic ideology.

Having strong opinions about reforming vs overthrowing capitalism doesn’t make you a tankie. Defending Russian and Chinese totalitarianism does.

it’s not “loyalties” but … the particular brand of propaganda people are getting.

State propaganda exists to engender loyalty to the regime. That’s the whole point.

They are quick to jump on any “western” wrongdoing, but equally quick to dismiss much worse from their own tribe. Because they are tribalists and nationalists who favor some nations over others — because they’re brainfucked by propaganda, as you said.

This obsession with east vs west is paradigmatic of tankie tribalist ideology. They can’t conceive of someone who doesn’t obsess over nationality or ethnic and cultural loyalties. Humans are humans. We should fight to be free from state oppression. Not complicated.

They’re not communists. They’re tankies: nationalistic authoritarians who defend police state brutality and “alternative facts” to spread disinformation courtesy of Russia and China. They’re obsessed with a west vs east dialectic.

Also, I don’t think you mean liberals strictly, but socialists — demsoc, socdem, anarchists, whatever.

Anarchists don’t respect nation states or arbitrary class divisions, which clashes hard with tankies’ rabid nationalism.