There's significant encouragement for Scott McIntyre's position, even in Australia.
Here's an Irish perspective.McIntyre had trashed the foundation myth. More generally, he had drawn attention to the way soft-lit Remembrance is used slyly to promote wars of the present and future. On a visit to New Zealand on the eve of Anzac Day, Australian prime minister Tony Abbott referred to soldiers fighting in the Middle East today as “Sons of Anzac.
There are no exact parallels with Ireland’s experience, except in this: that the sentimentalisation of slaughter which McIntyre lost his job for exposing is evident, too, in the memorialising of the Irish misled into following England’s flag. Like the Kiwis and Aussies, they, too, were flung to their deaths like fistfuls of chaff.
Eamonn McCann: Rage not reverence should mark first World War commemorations
And an Australian academic:
Historically speaking then, McIntyre is not all that far off the mark, but he has been sacrificed on the altar of populist outrage. I try to teach my students to see the world differently, to think differently, to always question accepted opinion and then, when necessary, to speak out.
The decision made by the managing director of SBS is disappointing. Are journalists, academics and public figures only ever to tell people what they want to hear?
The response to McIntyre’s tweets is a demonstration that the popular perception of Anzac is completely out of step with the historical reality —but his remarks are also timely. We should not forget that war is never a one-sided affair in which our boys are squeaky-clean heroes and their boys murdering, raping villains.
War brings out the worst (as well as the best) in people. Some Anzacs were neither heroes nor particularly likeable characters — and some behaved little better than thugs and hooligans. I certainly would not have wanted to meet some of them in the back alleys of Cairo in 1915 after they had been on the piss all night.
But in the atmosphere of nationalistic chest-beating that surrounds the Anzac commemorations, there are not likely to be too many dissenting voices.
https://independentaustralia.net/articl ... story,7649
And more relevant commentary
“SBS supports our Anzacs — and apparently bars any questioning or criticism of them. That mentality sounds like it came right from North Korea, which is to be expected when a media outlet is prohibited from saying anything that offends high government officials. Any society in which it’s a firing offense for journalists to criticize the military is a sickly and undemocratic one.
The excuses offered by SBS for McIntyre’s firing are so insulting as to be laughable. Minister Turnball denies that he made the decision even as he admits that, beyond his public denunciation, he “drew [McIntyre’s comments] to the attention of SBS’s managing director Michael Ebeid. The Minister also issued a statement endorsing McIntyre’s firing, saying that “in his capacity as a reporter employed by SBS he has to comply with and face the consequences of ignoring the SBS social media protocol. For its part, SBS laughably claims McIntyre wasn’t fired for his views, but, rather, because his “actions have breached the SBS Code of Conduct and social media policy — as though he would have been fired if he had expressed reverence for, rather than criticism of, Anzac.
Notably, McIntyre’s firing had nothing to do with any claimed factual inaccuracies of anything he said. As The Washington Post’s Adam Taylor noted, historians and even a former prime minister have long questioned the appropriateness of this holiday given the realities of Anzac’s conduct and the war itself. As Australian history professor Philip Dwyer documented, McIntyre’s factual assertions are simply true. Whatever else one might say, the issues raised by McIntyre are the subject of entirely legitimate political debate, and they should be. Making it a firing offense for a journalist to weigh in on one side of that debate but not the other is tyrannical.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015 ... -religion/