Marx's saying "History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce" is one of those ingrained bits of non-wisdom we have to put up with, watching history repeat and repeat as mounting tragedies. But what about Communist apologetics? How do they repeat themselves?

Once upon a time, the free press was subverted by communists, fellow travellers, sympathizers and endless quanities of dupes. Thus, Americans, especially including New York Times readers, were told Stalin's state-ordered famine was neither state-ordered nor did it lead to starvation, Mao was an agrarian, Castro a democrat, and other party lines to be found also in the Daily Worker and Pravda.

As I look at at tweet above, which pairs two genuine, recent op-eds from the NYT's "Red Century" series, maybe the saying should be: Farce repeats itself, over and over again in the New York Times -- a tragedy for our understanding of history and harbinger of worse to come. 

At this rate, how hard is it really to imagine the "Red Century" series developing a quick case of fuzzy-focus nostalgia for this?