I really like the Molly Crabapple illustration accompanying the article, but I can’t really tell what the figure in it is doing. Is she riding a bicycle made of flowers?

Man Controller of the Universe was paid for by the Rockefellers, and Diego Rivera had other work funded by plutocrats which is why he was kicked out of the Communist Party. But he continued to be a commie, and the mural was demolished in place in Rockefeller Center before it was completed because it was straight up Soviet agitprop. After the whatever he was at the center, Lenin was the central figure. Marx, Engels, and Trotsky were featured characters. At the time of the painting, Trotsky was wandering around in exile from the USSR, although he would live in Mexico with Rivera for a time until he was killed by a pickaxe wielding Soviet assassin. If being part of a mass of brainwashed robots driven like a herd of livestock by a murderous dictator is your thing, then possibly the painting might say something to you.