Hold on to your hats, we might have a new Egg Boy (well, Egg Man – there’s room for two heroes in this world).
Video footage of a man wearing a swastika and using homophobic and antisemitic language getting egged went viral earlier this week after a passerby met his rhetoric with yolks.
Waving a flag believed to be that of the Nazis, the man – later confirmed to be former Proud Boy Jovi Val – was using offensive language when the passerby clearly had enough of his ‘demonstration’ and grabbed an egg out of his grocery bag.
Val, real name Jovanni Valle, is a well-known right-wing activist who first made headlines when he was allegedly struck in the face with a glass bottle at a bar two years ago for wearing a MAGA hat.
The New York Post reported at the time that the Trump supporter was in a Manhattan bar when someone threw his hat on the floor, before ‘smashing a bottle’ over his head.
Now he’s made headlines again; this time, for getting egged while waving a Nazi flag and spouting anti-LGBTQ+ views in New York City’s Union Square.
Elise Fredericks, 25, posted the footage to social media after witnessing the incident. The video has since gone viral, having been viewed more than 78K times.
HERES A VIDEO OF A NAZI GETTING EGGED
Posted by Elise Fredericks on Wednesday, 1 May 2019
Elise, from New York City, spoke to UNILAD about the moments leading up to the incident, describing how Valle told her friend: ‘if you’re gay you were molested as a child’.
The 25-year-old said:
I was sitting on the steps with a friend at 14th Street Union Square when we saw a man with a flag and a swastika around his neck spewing garbage.
My friend, myself, and a few surrounding people were debating with him on his insane views about LGBTQ folk. He said to my fellow queer friend: ‘if you’re gay you were molested as a child’ and said the Holocaust ‘never happened’.
We both were in awe of how someone could be so ignorant. We’re both LGBTQ+ so it was appalling and it upset my friend pretty badly.
In the footage, a bystander can be seen approaching Valle before taking an egg out of a paper bag and smashing it on his head while the crowd cheers.
Valle then chases the unknown man and tries to tackle him, before several New Yorkers quickly intervene and throw the Nazi demonstrator to the ground.
Speaking about the moment the passerby egged Valle, Elise said she wasn’t expecting it to happen, saying she was ‘shocked’ when it did.
She explained to UNILAD:
I was shocked. You can hear me yelling in the video about how he threw the egg, the egg got all over my friend and one of the girls we were sitting with.
I believe he [the passerby] had just been doing some grocery shopping at the local Whole Foods and happened to overhear his awful rhetoric, stood by listening and just couldn’t take it anymore so he egged him.
UNILAD attempted to reach out to Valle for comment. His social media accounts have since been suspended.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).