Sometimes the truth can be very hard for people to accept. Western academia, media, and press all turned a blind eye to Soviet repression, gulags, and purges up until the late 40s and early 50s. George Orwell, a leftist, had a very hard time getting Homage to Catalonia published because it portrayed the Soviet-backed Republican forces in Spain in a very unfavorable light. The Western intellectual elite was infatuated with Communism and didn't want to deal with facts that contradicted their neat world view.

There's a really powerful line in 1984 that has stuck with me: "He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past."