‘This Egg Has United People,’ Teenager Says of Protest Against Bigotry

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SYDNEY, Australia — The Australian teenager known as “Egg Boy,” speaking publicly to the news media for the first time since he cracked an egg on a far-right politician’s head, acknowledged, “I understand what I did was not the right thing to do.”

“However,” the teenager, Will Connolly, 17, said in an interview with Channel 10, an Australian television channel that aired on Monday evening, “this egg has united people.”

Mr. Connolly, who has become an international symbol against bigotry because of the encounter, added that the episode had been used to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the families of those killed in the March 15 terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand.

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That money is from a fund-raising page that was set up for the teenager and initially intended to help cover Mr. Connolly’s legal fees and to buy “more eggs.” By Monday, it had raised almost 80,000 Australian dollars, about $56,000.

A law firm has said it would represent Mr. Connolly pro bono, allowing all funds raised through the page to be donated toward victims of the Christchurch attacks.

Mr. Connolly’s abrupt transformation from anonymous Australian teenager to international sensation began one day after the Christchurch shootings, when Fraser Anning — a far-right Australian senator who blamed Muslim immigration for the attack — gave a news conference in Melbourne.

The egging, captured on video, raced through social media. In the days since, thousands of people around the world have embraced Mr. Connolly’s actions, and the teenager has been offered concert tickets for life, captured in street art, and honored by basketball players and talk show hosts.

Mr. Anning has not apologized for his comments, and said the teenager deserved what he got.

A lawyer for Mr. Connolly, Peter Gordon, said last week that there was “no indication” that Mr. Connolly would be charged with a crime, and added that his client had no plans to take legal action against Mr. Anning.

The worldwide reaction to his act has seemed to surprise Mr. Connolly, and the teenager said in the interview that the last week had been an overwhelming whirl of emotions, from stress to happiness.

“It’s blown up completely out of proportion to the point where it’s embarrassing,” he said.

Explaining how the egging had come to be, he said that given the tragedy in Christchurch, when he saw Mr. Anning’s statement he was “just flat-out disgusted.”

Still, the teenager said that he had listened to Mr. Anning speak for an hour at the news conference to see whether he would change his mind. “In my mind I wanted to forgive him,” Mr. Connolly said. But as the senator’s continued his comments, the nature of them “empowered me to egg him.”

In the days since, he said, he hasn’t had time to process all of the free offers he has received, but he is sure of one thing: “I’m officially off from eggs now.”





Source : Nytimes