Image: Henry Nowak a few hours before his death. Photo: Public domain (CC0)

The murder of Henry Nowak has shocked many, and rightly so. British anti-racism has overcorrected so severely that it has become racism itself, and the ruling class’s refusal to face this is the road to the abyss. The Netherlands suffers from the same disease, and the only effective antidote is open debate. The campaigns to undermine X betray how fiercely some wish to suppress that debate — but would we ever have heard of Henry Nowak without it? Once again, X is throwing a spanner in the works of the woke agenda.

Who Was Henry Nowak?

Henry Nowak was an 18-year-old Brit who, on 3 December 2025, was walking home alone after an evening out with friends. He was stabbed by a brown-skinned man in a turban — Vickrum Digwa — who kept taunting and filming him. Digwa’s brother called the police and told them that a white racist had attacked him and his brother. The killer’s mother hid the knife.

The police arrived, and the footage has since gone around the world. The officers found a young white man lying helpless on the ground, while Digwa and his family told them that this man was a racist. Henry could no longer stand, but was still able to say that he had been stabbed. ‘I don’t think you have, mate,’ said an officer.

Henry was arrested. He was dragged a short distance and turned over so he could be handcuffed. As he continued, with what little strength he had left, to say that he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe, his hands were cuffed and his rights were read to him. By the time the officers realised he was dead, they attempted resuscitation — but it was already too late.

For those who can bear to watch, below are images from Henry Nowak’s final moments. The full video can be viewed here.

The Comparison with George Floyd

The death of Henry Nowak recalls the death of American criminal George Floyd on 25 May 2020. His last words during his arrest were likewise ‘I can’t breathe’ — a phrase repeated endlessly during the countless demonstrations that followed. Media around the world gave extensive coverage to the alleged racism of the officer who arrested Floyd.

In the Netherlands, Dam Square in Amsterdam filled to capacity on 1 June 2020 — despite the Covid restrictions — and Mayor Femke Halsema stood among the protesters wearing a badge commemorating the abolition of slavery. She was not the only politician to use Floyd’s death for self-promotion. Taking the knee became a compulsory ritual for anyone wishing to demonstrate their anti-racist credentials.

The United States was engulfed by violent riots in which at least 19 people died and widespread looting and arson took place. Yet the media’s prevailing tone remained sympathetic to the protesters, who were, after all, fighting for a good cause: against racism. There were riots in Britain too, and politicians knelt to express their solidarity.

All the more glaring, then, was the silence of those same media and politicians when it came to the death of Henry Nowak. After George Floyd died, there was global uproar within a week. After Nowak’s death, there was nothing. Only six months later, once the killer had been convicted, did Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who had been so eager to take the knee for Floyd — manage a tweet.

Racism

The difference in reactions to these two so closely parallel cases is striking. In both, the police failed to recognise that they were dealing with a medical emergency, despite the fact that the person in custody complained he could not breathe, and in both cases the detainee likely died in part as a result of how the police handled him. And in both cases, racism played a significant role.

In George Floyd’s case, it was immediately concluded that he had been treated the way he was because he was black — even though it later emerged there was no evidence for this. Henry Nowak was accused of racism by his own killer, and the police believed it. After his death, his phone and his father’s phone were even searched for racist content — of which there was none.

Despite the fact that racism was never proved in Floyd’s case, media and politicians worldwide seized on his death to denounce racism. Despite the fact that racism demonstrably played a role in Nowak’s death, those same media and politicians now warn against ‘politicising’ it.

To those who argue that the police could not possibly have been racist towards a white boy: think about what racism actually is. It is judging someone as a member of a race rather than as an individual. It is the dehumanisation of a person on the basis of assumed group characteristics. That is why Floyd was seen as a victim — despite being a habitual criminal — and Nowak as a perpetrator — despite being a model student.

Institutional

To those who argue that anti-black racism is far worse because it is deep-rooted in Western societies: anti-white racism has by now been so actively promoted that it appears to be gaining the upper hand. The officers who handcuffed Henry Nowak had undergone mandatory diversity training designed to teach them that they were unconscious racists and that they should side with people of colour above all else.

It was no coincidence that the officers believed Digwa when he claimed Nowak was a racist; they had been trained to believe it. And Digwa and his family knew how readily they would be believed — the British police are, after all, widely perceived as biased against white people. It is no wonder that white Britons complain about Two Tier Policing.

Consider how the largely Pakistani grooming gangs were able to get away with the mass rape of British girls for decades, because too many people in Britain were afraid of being called racist. Consider how in 2017, 22 people died in the Manchester Arena bombing because a security guard did not dare detain a suspect for fear of being labelled racist.

All of this is a consequence of the identity politics that came to dominate the Western establishment. In the tweet below, Brivael le Pogam explains how there is a straight line from abstruse intellectual theory to the anti-white tribalism that left Henry Nowak to die lonely and abandoned, despite being surrounded by people whose job it was to help him.

Translation tweet: ‘Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze. Three intellectuals who, in the 1960s, produced unreadable books in the back of Parisian lecture halls. None of them ever held a weapon. None of them had ever heard of Southampton. And yet, sixty years later, it is their ideas that hold…’ — the thread continues at the link.

The Campaign Against X

This dangerous thinking is poisoning our establishment. It has lodged itself in the universities, in politics, in the upper ranks of the civil service, in the police, in the judiciary, and in the establishment media. It is no coincidence that the tragic death of Henry Nowak only received attention once outrage about it spread on X.

Nor is it a coincidence that the politicians, organisations, and media that promote this thinking are so aggressively hostile to X. The insular groupthink of their doctrine cannot tolerate debate, because it is held together by unproven assumptions and suppressed facts. It can only survive through control of the media — and since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (X), that monopoly has been broken.

Keir Starmer’s attacks on Elon Musk are therefore not a defence of British values; they are the lies of a thief caught in the act. Starmer rightly earned the nickname Two Tier Keir after the Southport riots. The catastrophic tribalism of Starmer and his fellow travellers is tearing British society apart.

If the EU had already succeeded in silencing X, would we ever have heard of Henry Nowak? Would the establishment media have reported on it at all? All the performative outrage about the problems on X cannot conceal the fact that X does what much of the mainstream press will not. X has free speech — and it breaks news that our establishment would rather keep buried.

The Netherlands as Well

And do not assume this is a matter that only concerns Americans and Britons. In the Netherlands too, anti-white racism has become so deeply entrenched that it may now fairly be called institutional. Do you remember the youth gangs in Gorinchem who assaulted young teenagers? If you do, it is probably thanks to X — because the Dutch media failed us then too.

What was particularly striking: when the establishment press reported on the story following the online outcry, they suppressed the fact that all those responsible for the assaults were non-white, while all the victims were white. After the videos went viral, I wrote a piece about it — because it was so obvious how the media would have reacted if the racial composition had been reversed.

Translation tweets: Wierd Duk: And can those thugs standing there filming and jeering be taught some manners too? Quoted tweet by Mick van Wely, 10 September 2022: Horrific. A boy is being kicked and punched in the face whilst lying on the ground. The police have now arrested two boys aged 12 and 14. Maaike van Charante: Of course, this is by no means the first time a video like this has surfaced. And unfortunately, the colour distribution is rather monotonous. I wrote this piece in 2019 in response to the headkicking videos from Gorinchem.

The anxiety about possible racism has become so completely unbalanced that it is more likely to produce racism than prevent it. Western societies are in fact barely racist at all any more: the norm is coexistence, and racism has long been regarded with contempt by the vast majority.

But how can that healthy state of affairs survive when a significant part of the establishment has made a sport of ‘proving’ its own virtue by accusing the rest of society of racism?

Debate Is Essential

Our establishment has lost its way. Toxic doctrines are being given a platform — and are even being imposed on society as a whole. Those who claim to be fighting racism, disinformation, and polarisation are doing so by actively promoting tribalism. And in doing so, they are promoting precisely racism, disinformation, and polarisation.

Those within the establishment who should be pushing back are either indifferent or too afraid to speak. Anyone who does protest is quickly labelled a racist and can expect to be cast out.

There is only one antidote that stands any chance of working. Open debate. A return to the reality of empirical science and genuine freedom of expression. The dominance of a doctrine that stifles our thinking and conceals the truth must end. As must the false virtue that inverts everything.

The preachers of that virtue claim to stand for democracy and freedom of speech — but theirs is a ‘democracy’ in which only they are permitted to speak freely. Anyone who genuinely believes in democracy must, first and foremost, defend free debate. And right now, X is the pre-eminent place where that debate can still happen.

 

Translator’s note: The Gorinchem incidents refer to a series of filmed assaults by youth gangs in the Dutch city of Gorinchem (2019) that went viral online but received minimal coverage from Dutch mainstream media. The NOS (the Dutch public broadcaster) reported only after significant public pressure.

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