Perhaps our asymmetric outrage is a historical anomaly; a consequence of the West’s accidental alliance with the Soviet Union after 1941. If so, it is based on a bizarre amnesia about the Second World War, which began when Hitler and Stalin joined forces. For fully a third of the conflict, the two dictators collaborated against what they called “capitalist Albion”. That the Nazi-Soviet Pact now seems so strange to us is a comment on how one-sidedly our generation judges the two movements.

The day after it was revealed, The Times remarked in an editorial that the only people who would be surprised were those who had refused to see the similarity of the two systems’ domestic authoritarianism and aggressive foreign policies. As Guy Crouchback, the disillusioned hero of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy puts it, “The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms.”

No one, then or now, would argue that Hitler and Mussolini were aberrations, and that “real fascism” had never been tried. Yet many persist in imagining that there is some sort of Platonic Communism, unrelated to the actions of every self-described communist in history. The fact that Marxism always – always – ends in labour camps and firing squads is overlooked. So is the fact that every new manifestation – Russia, Yugoslavia, Cuba, etc – is initially hailed by Western Leftists before being denounced, when the collapse comes, as not having been real communism at all. We recognise that coercion is an intrinsic part of fascism. But we mulishly refuse to accept the same of communism. (Even Sarkar, who seems clever and amiable, defends the use of political violence.) We persist in believing, against all the evidence, that communists are in no way responsible for the real-world implementation of their doctrines; that it’s all somehow OK because they care about poor people and ethnic minorities and so on.

But where would you rather be poor – South Korea or North Korea? Where would you rather be black – Miami or Havana? Where, come to that, would you rather be agitating to overthrow the system, as Sarkar is – London or Laos? You might argue that Elle, Teen Vogue and the rest are guilty of nothing more than ignorance.

But such ignorance – such tasteless, wilful, self-righteous ignorance in the face of a century of atrocities – is a form of moral idiocy.

Ignore the despondency: you've never had it so good