A TIME article titled '65 Million Americans Should Threaten to Not Pay Taxes' has created a social media backlash with Trump supporters reacting with 'abuse' to the suggestion that Democrats should withhold taxes until “democracy is restored.”
The article argues that the approximately 65 million Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton should pledge to not pay federal taxes if another Republican presidential candidate wins a future election with fewer popular votes than a Democrat.
Donald Trump is the second Republican candidate to lose the popular vote but win the presidency in the last 16 years, following George W. Bush’s electoral win over Al Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000.
The presidency is decided through the Electoral College vote. A group of 538 electors cast a vote for president on December 19, with 270 votes required to win the majority. In most cases, electors vote for the candidate who wins the election in their state.
The article’s author, Mark Weston, argues that “a national movement not to pay federal taxes in the future would put Republicans on notice.”
“They do not have the right to impose a hard-right, second-place presidency on a moderate nation every dozen or so years,” the article reads, adding that if a popular vote-winner isn’t elected to office in the future, then Democrats “should not submit to paying taxes to the federal government.”
Such a suggestion angered numerous social media users, with many irate Trump supporters arguing that democrats don’t pay tax anyway as they don’t work.
Others cried hypocrisy, saying they didn’t complain when Democrats were in power.
One Twitter user, whose namesake wrote the article, has become the target of abuse by angry Republicans following the publishing of the story.
“Getting abuse from American Nazis for something written by a namesake,” another Mark Weston tweeted. “They sound like a nice bunch.”