ANI O'BRIEN: Henry Nowak was dying; police didn't believe him

The cost of identity politics

The murder of Henry Nowak should be a cultural turning point, a wake up call, a trigger to reset the moral compass in Britain. On its face, it is the story of an 18 year old university student stabbed to death while walking home after a night out. That alone is tragic and would warrant UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s commentary on knife crime. Yet what has made Henry’s death reverberate so powerfully across Britain and the rest of the West, despite initial total silence from the media, is not merely the brutality and senselessness of the attack itself. It is the extraordinary sequence of events that followed, and what those events reveal about the institutions that are supposed to protect us. What’s more, the terrible event underscores a growing problem that our elites do not want to address and get deeply uncomfortable about, that is the scourge of anti-white racism.

Henry Nowak had only recently begun studying finance at the University of Southampton. His face still had a youthful softness to it and it is difficult to describe him as a man. A young man, sure. Friends and family describe him as kind, thoughtful, funny and hardworking. His father spoke about helping him settle into university accommodation only weeks before his death. His mother recalled the pride she felt when he received his university offer. His sister described him as her best friend and more than six hundred people attended his funeral. The portrait that emerged during the trial was not of a troublemaker nor a reckless young man. It was of an ordinary teenager with his whole life ahead of him.

Unlike the man he would be compared to in death, Nowak had no criminal record and was not on drugs. While Keir Starmer “took the knee” for the American man killed by police in the commission of a crime in Minneapolis, he resisted even putting out a statement about Henry Nowak until yesterday. Starmer made sweeping statements about the tragedy of the death of George Floyd who had served at least eight jail terms for various misdemeanour and felony charges including drug possession and dealing, theft, and trespassing. His most serious offence was an armed home invasion in which he and several other men forced their way into an apartment, and Floyd held a gun to a woman’s abdomen while searching for money and drugs.

George Floyd did not deserve to die despite the many awful things he did in his life. I want to make that clear. However, the collective grief that was performed following his death, all over the world, was a bizarre cultural moment. It resulted in the now Prime Minister of the UK expressing more heartbreak for Floyd than he has for a murdered 18 year old in his own country who had lived a law abiding life.

Anyway. On the night of 3 December 2025, Henry Nowak was walking home after spending time with friends. The court heard that although he had been drinking, his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit for driving. He was alone, unarmed, and making his way back to student accommodation when he encountered twenty-three year old Vickrum Digwa on the street. Their interaction lasted only moments but would destroy multiple lives after Digwa used a large Sikh blade to stab Henry five times. In an attempt to escape and save his own life, Henry climbed fences, staggered through neighbouring properties, and left a trail of blood behind him. Witnesses heard him crying out that he had been stabbed and that he was dying. And he was.

Digwa has now been convicted of murder. The judge rejected his account of events and, crucial to the bigger picture here, rejected claims that Henry had been racially abusive, describing the allegations as “wicked lies”. Nonetheless the Digwa family allegedly shouted out accusations of racism to Henry’s family in court leading to a scuffle. This is the family whose actions in the hour before Henry’s death can only be described as callous and morally indefensible. According to the evidence presented at trial, the Digwas did not call an ambulance for a young man who repeatedly told them he was dying as he lay bleeding at their feet. Instead, they restrained him, accused him of racism, denied that he had been stabbed, concealed the weapon used in the attack (Digwa’s mother has been convicted in relation to this), and provided police with a version of events that obscured the seriousness of his injuries. Vickrum Digwar filmed parts of the aftermath beginning immediately after he had stabbed Henry and his brother Gurpreet filmed his mother removing evidence. Vickrum also took close-up photographs of Henry's injuries.

As the young man pleaded for help and struggled to breathe, the Digwa family were reportedly busy constructing a narrative that cast him as the aggressor. Their apparent indifference toward a human being who was bleeding to death in front of them is extraordinary. When Gurpreet finally called emergency services he reported the incident as a racist assault on his younger brother and explicitly denied any weapon was involved. He advised the dispatcher that they were restraining Henry, but did not mention his injuries.

Vickrum, Gupreet, and their father appeared in court today charged with multiple weapons offences. In his murder trial, the prosecution described Vickrum Digwa as a man obsessed with weapons and Police eventually discovered more than twenty weapons at his family home resulting in the additional charges. The BBC reports:

“The alleged weapons are a flick knife, an extendable baton, knuckledusters, a machete, swords and kusaris.

His father, Moga Singh, 52, and his brother, Gurpreet Digwa, 27 - who are on bail - appeared alongside him to face the same charges.

Gurpreet also faced four additional charges: Possessing an offensive weapon - an asp - in a public place, possessing a prohibited weapon - an air rifle, possessing an axe in a public place, possessing a knife in a public place.

All of the offences are dated 4 December 2025, the day after Nowak was killed.”

Vickrum Digwa was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years for the murder of Henry Nowak.

If the story ended there, it would still be a national tragedy. But it does not end there.

This is just the start.

What has generated outrage across the English-speaking world is what happened when police arrived at the scene. Bodycam footage released following Digwa’s sentencing captures Henry repeatedly telling officers that he has been stabbed. He tells them that he “can’t breathe” over and over again which has drawn the comparisons to George Floyd. We see him on video pleading for help and yet, rather than immediately getting him medical assistance, officers treated him as a suspect.

It is clear that the way the officers treated Henry was driven by the uncritical way they accepted Digwa’s version of events that Henry had racially abused him, attacked him, and knocked off his turban.

The footage is difficult to watch. I had to stop several times and was sickened by the police officers’ actions. As Henry repeatedly says he has been stabbed, one officer responds, “I don’t think you have, mate.” They then roll him onto his stomach, handcuff him, drag him across gravel, and eventually arrest him for assault. The final words Henry heard were not words of reassurance, they were a police caution read to a suspect under arrest:

"You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

Well, Henry’s words were given in evidence at Digwa’s trial. We have all heard his words. Heard him begging and pleading. And the evidence shows that those officers watched him die because his murderer called him a racist and they believed him.

Only later did officers realise that Henry had been stabbed five times by a ceremonial blade. Somehow they missed the life seeping out of him that is plainly observable when watching the bodycam footage. By the time they began to attempt lifesaving measures it was too late. Henry lost consciousness and died shortly afterwards.

It is impossible to read the statements delivered by Henry’s father in court and afterwards without feeling physically sick. Mark Nowak described the treatment of his son as “inhumane and degrading”. He spoke of the unbearable contrast between the treatment afforded to the killer and the treatment afforded to his dying child. Digwa was believed immediately and Henry was not. Digwa was treated as a victim immediately and Henry was immediately treated as a criminal. Mark Nowak told the public that his son did not die with dignity.

Even though they handcuffed a dying 18 year old and dragged him across gravel, they did not even handcuff Digwa after it became apparent that Henry was mortally wounded. He was allowed to ride to the police station without restraints and was then taken to the kitchen to choose something to eat.

This case has brought a whole bunch of seriously challenging issues to the fore. These are uncomfortable issues, but they are unavoidable. They must be addressed.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s response perfectly illustrates the problem. After the sentencing, Starmer described the case as “awful” and “shocking” before pivoting almost immediately to a discussion of knife crime in general. Certainly knife crime is part of this story. Britain does have a serious knife crime problem. But reducing Henry Nowak’s murder to a conversation about knife crime feels like a deliberate refusal to confront what has made this case resonate so deeply with the public. Millions of people can see that the defining feature of this story is not merely that a young man was stabbed, it is that a dying victim was disbelieved because an accusation of racism had already framed the situation in the minds of those responding to it.

And this terrible set of circumstances does not emerge from nowhere. It is the product of decades of ideological conditioning across Western institutions. For years, police forces, universities, public services and government agencies have been immersed in theories that divide society into oppressors and oppressed. These theories may have originated in academic departments, but they have long since escaped the university campus. They now influence training programmes, diversity initiatives, public policy, and organisational culture. And thus emerged a worldview in which racial identity is treated not simply as a demographic characteristic, but as a source of moral status.

Under this ideological framework, allegations of racism perpetrated against white people are treated with scepticism or dismissed entirely, while allegations of racism perpetrated by white people can acquire an almost sacred unchallengeable status. Few people openly talk about this strange one-way model because doing so would result in accusations of racism and potential threat to one’s employment. Yet increasingly people can see it operating in practice and discuss it in “safe spaces”. Whether fair or unfair, that perception now exists, and cases like Henry Nowak’s reinforce it.

I know exactly where some of this thinking comes from because I was taught it myself.

When I was at university, I took a paper in my first semester on race, racism and media. Like many students of my generation, I was introduced to the equation of Racism = Prejudice plus Power (R = P + P) that has come to dominate much of academia, public policy, and activist culture. One of the foundational texts was Peggy McIntosh’s famous essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. The argument advanced by McIntosh was so simple that after one ill-advised question that was shot down immediately by the tutor, I accepted the information as truth and nodded along with everyone else. White people, we were told, move through the world carrying a set of invisible advantages we often fail to recognise. And racism is not primarily about individual acts of prejudice, but about systems, structures and power. Most importantly, it is not possible to be racist to white people because white people occupy positions of social power.

At eighteen years old, the same age as Henry, I accepted this rubbish. Why wouldn’t I? The lecturers had credentials and the reading lists were extensive. The theory was presented not as one perspective among many but as settled fact. I thought I was being educated, but I was being taught to hate myself and imbibe a narrative of original sin. We were told to examine our privilege, interrogate our assumptions, and understand society through the lens of power. Funnily enough though, it was abundantly clear that we were not to challenge the ideology itself.

Looking back, it is not surprising that these ideas existed. They still exist! Universities should expose students to a smorgasbord of ideas. Good, bad, and batshit. Not as unquestionable truths, but as contestable claims. Entire categories of human experience are disappeared from view, not worthy of examination or even actively hidden because their existence does not fit with the orthodoxy. If white people are inherently privileged, then evidence of white people struggling or suffering complicates that picture. If racial disparities always reflect systems of oppression, then alternative explanations are suspect.

These bad ideas escaped the university campus, as I said, and moved into institutions. They have shaped diversity training, public sector policy, corporate human resources departments, media organisations and the education system. The language is tweaked slightly depending on the setting, but the underlying assumptions remain consistent. Society is divided into groups and some groups possess privilege while other groups possess disadvantage.

Some of the loudest evangelists for R = P + P are highly educated professionals who move comfortably through elite institutions. They occupy influential positions in academia, media, politics and the public service. They describe society primarily through the language of racial power in ways that often stray into ‘White Saviour’ territory and they are deeply committed to the ideas of privilege, historical responsibility and structural power. I do not doubt that many of them are very sincere in their beliefs. What concerns me is this worldview encourages a kind of performative self-flagellation among affluent white progressives who seem to believe moral virtue requires endless public denunciations of their own identity while they erase the suffering of white people not as fortunate as them.

Conversations about anti-white racism are toxic because for many people inside these intellectual echo chambers, acknowledging its existence feels like a threat to their entire worldview. If racism can be directed at anyone, regardless of race, then the neat hierarchy of privilege and oppression becomes far more complicated.

And so they redefine racism in a way that excludes the possibility of anti-white racism. A white child bullied because of his race has experienced prejudice, they might say, but not racism. A white employee denied an opportunity because of her race has experienced discrimination, but not racism. A white victim targeted because of his race has experienced hostility, but not racism. A young man like Henry can only be a racist, a perpetrator of hate, not the victim of it.

Now, of course I need to slot in some caveats here because the Bad Faith Readers will accuse me of all sorts if I don’t. So: none of this means every claim of anti-white racism is true. It certainly does not mean white people are uniquely oppressed or that historical injustices never happened. It does not mean I support or encourage embracing racial grievance politics, white identity politics, or any of the genuinely ugly movements that have emerged in reaction to modern identity politics. In fact, one of the greatest dangers of denying anti-white racism is that it creates fertile ground for exactly those movements. Racism is bad no matter who does it and who is the victim. When legitimate concerns are dismissed, the worst voices rush in to fill the vacuum. It is not a sustainable basis for social cohesion. In fact, it is a recipe for disaster.

Most people, of all races, do not experience life primarily through the lens of race. They experience it through work, family, community, health, housing, living costs, and whether they can provide a better future for their children. They understand that racism exists and that historical injustices happened. What they reject is the idea that race should be the organising principle of public life in 2026.

That is why Henry Nowak’s death is not merely another tragic murder case. It has triggered people to confront the possibility that institutions have become so afraid of accusations of racism that they can no longer see individuals clearly. If we spend years teaching people that racism primarily flows in one direction, if we encourage them to treat accusations differently depending on who makes them, and if we train them to interpret events through rigid categories of privilege and oppression, we should not be surprised when those assumptions begin shaping their decisions in the real world.

The thing is, this ideology rests upon a caricature of reality. The public is constantly invited to imagine white people as a privileged class whose position in society is defined by historical advantage. It is hard for many people to believe that most of Britain’s impoverished population are White British. According to the UK’s leading poverty research organisation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), 21% of White British people live in poverty. The UK population is about 69 million and around 74–75% of the population identifies as White British according to recent census data, so that makes approximately 9-10 million living in poverty. Although JRF reports that Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Black African communities have higher poverty rates, there are still far more poor White British people in absolute terms because White British people are a much larger share of the population. There are roughly eight to ten times as many White British people living in poverty as there are Pakistanis living in poverty (778,000), and more than fifteen times as many as Black Africans living in poverty (595,000).

The same phenomenon exists in New Zealand where Māori and Pacific people experience poverty and deprivation at higher rates, but NZ Europeans make up a larger share of the total impoverished population.

These statistics genuinely shock many people, especially actually well-off white people, because they have been taught so aggressively that being white is a privilege and, because they are privileged themselves, they accept it. They are blissfully unaware of the suffering of a large number of white people.

White does not mean wealthy, or powerful, nor does it mean insulated from hardship. Millions of working-class white families across Britain struggle with stagnant wages, poor housing, economic insecurity and limited opportunities. Whiteness does not guarantee access to privileged elite status. Most White Brits are simply ordinary people trying to build decent lives for themselves and their children. Yet public discourse treats them as representatives of a historical collective rather than as individuals.

Underlying this attitude is the poisonous notion of inherited guilt. According to this logic, contemporary white people are expected to carry responsibility for historical injustices committed by people who happened to share their skin colour. It is a concept that would be regarded as grotesque if applied to any other group. We do not hold modern Japanese citizens morally responsible for Pearl Harbour nor modern Turks responsible for the actions of the Ottoman Empire.

Civilised societies abandoned the principle of collective guilt for good reason. Individuals are responsible for their own actions, not the actions of long-dead ancestors. The modern human rights system was built on the rejection of collective guilt. This principle is reflected in international human rights law and in the prohibition on collective punishment under the Geneva Conventions. Holding someone morally culpable for historical wrongs because of the group they belong to is a principle more closely associated with tribalism than with liberal democracy.

The irony of all ironies is that most white people have responded to multiculturalism with remarkable openness. Contrary to the caricatures often promoted by activists, the overwhelming majority have no interest in racial tribalism or ethnonationalism. We work alongside people from different backgrounds, form friendships across communities, marry people from different races, and generally want peaceful, harmonious societies. What many of us object to is not diversity, it is being told that our race places us permanently on the wrong side of a moral ledger.

The murder of Henry Nowak does not prove some grand conspiracy against white people and it doesn’t justify hostility toward minority communities. And, given what I have just said about collective guilt, the actions of one murderer should not be used to condemn an entire religious group. The judge was right to make the point that Digwa’s actions were his own.

The Sikh community are not the danger here and not who should cop the justified anger of other British people. The people who deserve our ire are those who have saturated our culture with the poisonous nonsense that is Critical Race Theory and those who have operationalised hatred against white people in institutions. It is that institutional cowardice and ideological blindness that is creating conditions in which racial tensions are becoming more difficult to contain.

Political leaders across the West have either been involved boots and all with embedding toxic ideologies or have been so utterly spineless that they have done nothing to challenge them. Most ordinary people instinctively understand a simple principle that these politicians seem incapable of grasping, that every human life should matter equally.

The phrase “All Lives Matter” was treated with derision by elites when it emerged during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, yet stripped of political baggage it expresses the only foundation upon which a genuinely multicultural society can survive. Either every life matters equally, or society eventually descends into competing hierarchies of victimhood.

Henry Nowak’s life mattered. It mattered no less than any other life.

His death should horrify us not because he was white, but because he was a human being. He never got the chance to finish university. He never got the chance to build a career, fall in love, have children, buy a home, or grow old. Instead, he spent the final minutes of his life trying to convince police officers that he had been stabbed and that he could not breathe. That is what people cannot get past.

A healthy society cannot function if people believe justice depends on race and if accusations are perceived to be weighed differently depending on who makes them. And it cannot function if institutions, like the police force, become so frightened of being called racist that they are incapable of doing their jobs.

Henry Nowak’s final words should haunt every police officer, politician, journalist and public servant who watches the footage. Everyone who continues to propagate nonsense that white people are uniquely bad and should be punished for collective guilt. Everyone who has spent years insisting that racism only flows in one direction should at least have the intellectual honesty to ask whether those ideas have consequences in the real world.

Justice cannot depend on race. Not the victim's race. Not the suspect's race. If Britain cannot learn that lesson from the death of Henry Nowak, it is difficult to imagine what it will learn it from.

Note: Because this comes up every time I write about British politics, I will inform, or remind you, that I was born in London to a British mother and Kiwi father. We moved to New Zealand when I was four and we went back and forth relatively frequently when I was growing up. I am a dual citizen. I have an interest in all politics, but am particularly plugged in to New Zealand and British politics. And American, I guess, because none of us have any choice about that!

Ani O'Brien writes at Thought Crimes