Eddie Hobbs Responds to Hit Piece (The Irish Times Letters 13/1/26) Eddie Hobbs responds. Sir, on January 4th, your journalist Conor Gallagher contacted me by email relating to an article he was writing about the political right in 2026 and referring to Steve Bannon’s comments on an emerging Trump here (“Eddie Hobbs: From consumer advice to conspiracy theories,” January 10th).

Politely, I advised, as I’ve consistently done, that I’d zero interest in public office, left or right, and was sticking to media. When he persisted, I said I’d consent to an interview if the editor of The Irish Times was interviewed first on my channel, Counterpoint. This conditional acceptance was absent in his article, which misrepresented the exchange as a refusal to interview. He denigrates to a trope the vastly abundant global literature and counter-science publications and studies on Covid, climate, and banking as conspiracy theories without offering a shred of insight. This is modern agenda journalism; it is not reporting. In a TV series 20 years ago and consistent with a 2006 book, articles, and interviews, I took an Irish audience through an exercise contrasting borrowing costs against ultra-low rental yields to, once again, warn off investing in Irish residential investment property. The hit piece inverts this into advising to jump into the market. Either he failed to do primary research or based it on historical comments by the financially illiterate. He refers to my opinion article in the Wall Street Journal 2012, which was triggered by the jimmying of the nascent Insolvency Act, which hobbled distressed debtors and gave banks vetoes. It’s a strong and accurate piece, and I’d write it again in a heartbeat, given the carnage caused. He attributes words to me that I did not write, words from the Wall Street Journal headline, and skips my content and its damning conclusion about how Ireland was run. He fails to give the full title to my current book, Breaking the Silence on the Return of Totalitarianism, leaving out the reference to totalitarianism, the impulse for surveillance, and control. Smart people aren’t fooled by such a piece and ask why, why now, and why behave this way? In the run-up to the presidential election, my four-minute piece to camera got a million views across platforms, and data shows it driving the outcome. The state establishment here, for which The Irish Times acts as a mouthpiece, is trying to strangle free speech because it knows that a new epoch is opening; it’s why X is under attack. It is why I’m under attack. It is why Eoin Linehan’s book Vandalising Ireland is attacked in The Irish Times. It is why government ID is to be mandated to access social media; this is the next battlefield. When I told your journalist that giving an interview to The Irish Times was not important to me, I meant it; what he heard was a whistle past the graveyard. – Yours, etc., EDDIE HOBBS, Naas, Co Kildare.