For most Irish people who know him at all, the moment they first heard about Eoin Lenihan – a right-wing social media influencer and commentator – was through his disastrous appearance on the Irish Times’ podcast Inside Politics last year.
Lenihan was on to promote his book Vandalising Ireland, and after giving him ample time to expound on the book, its themes and his childhood with little interruption, podcast host Hugh Linehan began to ask about some controversies regarding his previous writing and social media activity. Eoin almost immediately lost the plot, slated Hugh’s integrity and professionalism for daring to ask such questions, and accused him of spreading lies and smears about him. It went on for an extraordinary length of time like that, with Eoin sometimes refusing to answer any further questions while also refusing to end the interview, leaving the host audibly baffled by how to proceed with a man who had evidently decided to place himself in checkmate.
Both during and since the interview, Lenihan has presented it as an ambush meant to assassinate his character based on scurrilous and supposedly “debunked” claims. This was the meat of a complaint he made to the Press Ombudsman, whose decision rejecting the complaint I encourage you to read for yourself. To me, the most striking part was that he told the Press Ombudsman he’d emailed the Irish Times to request they not release the episode, but did not inform the Ombudsman he’d emailed again three minutes later telling them “If you do publish it, publish the whole thing – no edits”, which is exactly what the Irish Times did. I can’t even conceive of telling such an easily disprovable lie, but Eoin Lenihan did it on the public record in a venue where those he was lying about had the opportunity to directly respond.
I want to deal with some other easily disprovable lies of his today: those about his 2019 Quillette article alleging unethical relationships between journalists and antifascist activists, and his subsequent peer-reviewed study of antifascist social networks online. It’s a little complicated to explain, but the lie at the heart of it is both simple and outrageous, and it’s a lie that Lenihan relies on when he goes around threatening to sue people for calling the article bullshit, as he does frequently.
Continue reading “Eoin Lenihan’s Easily Disprovable Lies About His “Antifa” Study”
Left in the Lurch 