Here’s an inspiring story. Fraser Anning, an utterly repugnant far-right Australian senator, who literally blamed the victims of the Christchurch massacre for their own murder, got his just comeuppance. As he was speaking, a White kid hit him over the head with an egg. And the lad is now an internet hero.
The story’s covered by the I, whose article in today’s edition for 18th March 2019, on page 9, runs
Online accolades for boy who egged far-right senator
Will Connolly, the 17 year old boy who egged the far-right Australian senator Fraser Anning, has become an online hero.
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested yesterday that the anti-Muslim senator should be charged after he slapped a teenager who cracked a raw egg over his head.
Mr Anning has been condemned for blaming Muslim immigration for the racist attacks on two New Zealand mosques. Mr Morrison said: “The full force of the law should be applied to Senator Anning.”
Posting on after the mass shootings on Friday, Mr Anning tweeted: “Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence?”
“The real cause of the bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration programe which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place, ” he said later. A GoFundMe page set up to raise A$2,000 (£1,0000) to pay for Connolly’s ‘legal fees’ and ‘more eggs’ had exceeded A$25,000 yesterday.
The site says most of the money will go to Christchurch victims.
The I’s columnist Eleanor Margolis wrote a further piece about, When words fail, some people need egging, adding a bit of historical context to Eggboy’s act. She mentions the egging of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeremy Corbyn at Finsbury Park mosque last week, and John Prescott, how it was used against people in the stocks in the Middle Ages, and by less than impressed audiences in Elizabethan theatres. She said of Eggboy’s strike against Anning that
For anyone slating Eggboy for food wastage, maybe supermarkets should start keeping the eggs that pass their sell by date specifically to see to people with grievances against our leaders. Becuase the thing about egging is, it’s sort of effective. When Eggboy matter-of-factly broke that egg on Fraser Anning’s racist head, millions of people soon saw a display of solidarity -from a White non-Muslim kid – with those impacted by the Christchurch shooting and the victims of today’s rampant islamophobia in general. When words fail, some people just need an egg to the face. It’s probably the most physical, yet mostly non-violent, way of showing the world you disagree with someone and their entire schtick. (p. 18)
Let’s add a bit more detail to this. Anning didn’t just blame Muslim immigration for the violence, he specifically suggested that the victims of this atrocity were themselves violent and to blame for it. He issued a statement essentially saying that Islam is a violent religion, all Muslims were violent, and the massacre victims were ‘not armed yet’. Very many religions and ideologies, including Christianity, have their violent as well as peaceful aspects, and Islam is no different. At times it has expanded through military conquest and at others through peaceful preaching and simply commercial interaction. It’s believed that Islam spread into sub-Saharan African, for example, through merchants, and that many of the African peoples, who adopted it did so because the majlis, or assembly of religious scholars, offered a constitutional check to the power of the kings. It’s also obviously untrue that Muslims are violent, as clearly shown by the peaceful behaviour of the vast majority. And Anning’s statement about the victims of the massacre is both wrong and obscene. They weren’t armed at all, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that they were going to be.
Kevin Logan dealt with this lie in his livestream he did with feminist professor Kristi Winters. It’s on YouTube, entitled ‘We Love You Kiwis’. I haven’t reblogged it, because it’s over an hour long and Logan, as an internet atheist, makes a series of gratuitous attacks on Christianity. But on a more positive note, he did post this video celebrating Anning’s nemesis. Enjoy!
Warning: Contains language.
Margolis’ article is also interesting for how she describes the attack on Corbyn. She repeats the falsehood that he was hit with an egg – he wasn’t. He was punched in the head. But she admits he was attacked by a racist. Which is interesting, as this is a tacit admission that Corbyn isn’t. And if he isn’t a racist, he can’t be an anti-Semite, by definition. But I doubt you’ll find the I going that far to buck the anti-Semitism witch-hunt against Labour.
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