Elon Musk Is Back At It Again! Trolls New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal With 'Iconic Image'
Musk shared on Twitter a dark meme without a caption, to highlight the fact that Parag Agrawal has taken over Jack Dorsey's position as the CEO of the microblogging platform.
New Delhi: SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted yet another post about Parag Agrawal, the newly appointed CEO of Twitter, on Wednesday. Musk shared a 'dark meme' without a caption, to highlight the fact that Agrawal has taken over Jack Dorsey's position as the CEO of the microblogging platform. The picture shared by Musk is a photoshopped image of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, a Soviet political leader, and Nikolai Yezhov, who was a Soviet secret police official under Stalin.
Yezhov was removed from the original image following his execution in 1940. In the meme shared by Musk, Agrawal's face has been photoshopped above Stalin's visage, whereas Dorsey's face has been placed above Yezhov's torso. Stalin was the head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the interior ministry of the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938 during the height of the Great Purge. In 1940, Yezhov, along with others, was executed for his role in the Purge.
Musk apparently tried to draw similarities between the situations of Agrawal taking over Dorsey's position, and Stalin's censors removing Yezhov from the photographic record, through the meme.
Here is what Musk tweeted:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2021
Historical Background Behind The Infamous Photo Of Stalin And Yezhov
Yezhov was a Soviet secret police official under Stalin and organised mass arrests, torture, and executions during the Great Purge. The Great Purge, or the Great Terror, also known as the Year of '37 and the Yezhovschina (period of Yezhov), was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union led by Soviet general secretary Stalin. The Great Purge was characterised by large-scale repression of peasantry, and ethnic cleansing. More than half a million Soviet citizens were killed during the repression, from 1937 to 1938.
However, Yezhov later fell from Stalin's favour, and was arrested, after he confessed to have carried out a range of anti-Soviet activities. Yezhov was short-statured, which is why he was nicknamed "The Poison Dwarf". Following his execution, the infamous picture was neatly edited to remove "The Poison Dwarf".
Just as Yezhov was removed from the image after being executed, Dorsey too has been removed in the photoshopped image shared by Musk as a meme, after he stepped down as Twitter CEO.
Agrawal replaced Dorsey as the CEO of Twitter on Monday, November 29.
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