This year, a series of rallies organised by neo-Nazi groups in Australian cities sparked public outrage and concern about the extreme right.

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Yet, some media coverage of the rallies downplayed the role neo-Nazis played in what they called "anti-immigration rallies". Other commentators misrepresented statistics on net migration.

Politicians, meanwhile, traded barbs about who was to blame for far-right demonstrators on city streets.

In the United States, there was a similarly muddled response to a recent scandal involving genocidal, racist text messages among young Republican leaders.

The messages included racist slurs, praise for Adolf Hitler and jokes about gas chambers. Yet, Vice-President JD Vance dismissed them as "edgy, offensive jokes" and called the backlash "pearl clutching".

The scandal did have repercussions for the Young Republicans, and some senior Republican leaders did condemn the messages. But the fact Vance and others could even think to minimise such vile language speaks to the way far-right politics and sentiments have been normalised today - especially by some in the mainstream media.

As detailed in a book I recently edited, The Far Right and the Media: International Trends and Perspectives, mainstream journalism does not simply cover far-right politics from a critical distance, it also helps define what counts as politically acceptable.

And in........

© Canberra Times