Twitter’s former CEO Dick Costolo has set Twitter ablaze by suggesting that those who disagree with the push to inject political activism into the workplace will be “lined up against the wall and shot.”
“Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution. I’ll happily provide video commentary,” tweeted Costolo, who ran Twitter between 2010 and 2015.
Costolo was replying to a tweet related to how Coinbase’s CEO has decided to separate business from political activism and offer an exit package for those employees who feel they can’t work in a company that doesn’t want to be hindered by politics and activism, as so many other companies have been distracted by in recent times.
“We focus minimally on causes not directly related to the mission,” Armstrong wrote.
But Costolo wasn’t impressed. “This isn’t great leadership. It’s the abdication of leadership. It’s the equivalent of telling your employees to ‘shut up and dribble,'” Costolo wrote.
Silicon Valley is “extremely left-leaning” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once admitted and, more increasingly than ever, many employees are trying to inject their activistic politics into the culture of many companies.
Costolo’s tweet is incendiary, not only because it was made during a time of political violence, but also because of the vocalization of a growing sentiment of intolerance to others expressing their viewpoints and threats toward those who don’t want to see homogenization of thought across many industries.
Political commentators and business leaders alike condemned Costolo’s radical message, not least because, in recent times, others have been banned from the platform for much less-incendiary speech.
