To the Editor,
Let’s start with the obvious: Sherryn Groch and Rachael Dexter have done what journalists are meant to do – drag the truth into daylight. Their investigation, “Don’t mention Hitler and you’re sweet: The great March for Australia deception” (Brisbane Times, 20 Sept 2025), shows exactly how neo-Nazis engineered a con: disguising themselves as “concerned citizens,” planting plain-clothes marshals in yellow vests, and hijacking microphones beside politicians too incurious, too careless, or too complicit to stop them.
For that, Groch and Dexter deserve applause. Standing ovations. Gold medals. They pulled from leaked chats, insider testimony, and months of grunt work. They told the truth.
And then came the scissors.
Readers got the sanded version – softened with endless “allegedly” and “denies,” as though neo-Nazis haven’t already been filmed saluting, chanting, and storming Camp Sovereignty. Critical context was trimmed: the infiltration playbook, financing trails, and the voices of those who resisted. Why? Because editors fear defamation lawyers more than they fear democracy unravelling. Lawyers demand hedging; readers deserve clarity.
Here’s the other word that needs to go: “clashes.” That’s what you call a schoolyard scrap, not blackshirts storming an Indigenous camp. The word blurs accountability. Say who started violence, how many were involved, and how long it lasted compared with hours of peaceful marching.
Your reporters did the heavy lifting. Back them with sharper framing and fuller transparency. Publish the raw chats online. Run the timelines. Let people see what Groch and Dexter saw.
Because history doesn’t remember editors who dulled the blade. It remembers the journalists who cut through. And with another far-right rally already scheduled for October, the least we can ask is coverage that doesn’t launder fascism into euphemism.
Lachlan McKenzie
Melbourne, VIC
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Well written. There is too much false equivalence, laundering of the nasty bits. As you say the audience, whether they agree or not need and deserve to hear and read the unvarnished, and certainly unadulterated, truth about the nasty, gutless, neo-nazi’s and their fellow travellers.
The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi and any reasonable media outlet would say so.