Nowak killing: Weaponised white rage could tip the UK into the abyss
Last week, Reform party leader, Nigel Farage, called for “pure cold rage” after the release of bodycam police footage of 18-year-old Henry Nowak’s arrest as he lay dying from stab wounds last December.
Farage ignored the call of Nowak’s father not to use his son’s death to further divide the country.
Rage is the currency of British far right politics. It is a tool of radicalisation, nurtured by the distortions of the right-wing media against migrants, Muslims and asylum seekers over many years.
Rage politics overwhelms. Rage doesn’t need facts. It works at an emotional level, feeding on fear. We are being “invaded”. We must “fight or die”. And this kind of extreme framing is now mainstream in the UK.
Radicalisation is usually framed as a problem of Muslim communities, but in Britain, there is no greater radicalisation campaign than that promoted by far right agitators on social media from Elon Musk to Tommy Robinson, given oxygen by respectable news outlets.
For decades, migration has been the fear factor stoked by the press and politicians, but migration numbers have been falling fast since the post-Brexit surge (the very thing Brexit was supposed to stop).
Small boat arrivals are also down as the UK and France collaborate to crack down on people trafficking and the Labour government starts to reduce the asylum backlog left by the Conservatives.
The Conservatives in government used their failure to process asylum claims and the placing of irregular migrants in hotels to stoke the politics of division and distraction. They needed this to obscure the real causes of poverty, rising living costs and failing public services – their own policies.
Musk and Vance weigh in
The horrific mass stabbings two years ago of schoolgirls in Southport set the precedent of the far right using deadly incidents to stir up nativist white fear of the “other”. Riots followed. Racist attacks spiked.
Even if the perpetrators are born here, they fit the racial profile of the dangerous stranger among us.
This is misinformation politics turned into incitement and deadly threats
An ecosystem of rage-fuelled social media focuses its ire on these cases, while neglecting incidents of violence that do not conform to the narrative of “anti-white racism”, two-tier policing against whites, or migrant violence.
Social media is awash with complaints about “DEI” (diversity, equality, inclusion) – a bogey word for the American Maga movement and the Trump administration, now parachuted into UK political discourse by agitators and fulminating columnists.
Nazi-saluting US billionaire Elon Musk has once again weighed in, trying to stir up white rage over the incident. US Vice President JD Vance said the murder of Henry Nowak by British-born Sikh, Vickrum Digwa, was due to an invasion of migrants. Digwa was given life in prison.
In Southampton, neo-Nazis attacked the police hours after Farage called for “pure cold rage”.
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A policewoman wrongly accused of being on duty the night Nowak was murdered had to go into hiding because she was doxxed and threatened, even though she had left the force.
This is misinformation politics turned into incitement and deadly threats.
Rage politics focuses its fury without fear of any consequences for justice, truth and the sensitivity of victims’ families. There’s no need to wait for inquiries to find out what happened: the right already have their culprits.
Recent guidance for police to address decades-old complaints of police bias toward ethnic minorities is under fire, with widespread calls for a return to “common sense” policing. Labour ministers fail to challenge the claim that Nowak’s treatment was caused by anti-bias guidance, rather than old-fashioned police indifference and incompetence.
An investigation into the incident may shed light on the real cause – but as always, the online rage baiters have long made up their mind: white victimhood is the name of the game.
When the killer is white
There are plenty of heinous crimes that do not garner far-right rage. Take the fatal stabbing of 14-year-old Ibrahima Seck in Manchester last June while he was on his way to play football. White teens chased him and one stabbed him to death. Three teenagers were sentenced in February.
Or the “unprovoked and senseless” murder of Saudi Arabian student Mohammed Algasim, 20, who was stabbed in the neck in Cambridge in August. Local man Chas Corrigan attacked Algasim with a kitchen knife after “an evening of drinking and using drugs”, prosecutors said. Corrigan was sentenced to life on 4 June.
Will the murder of Algasim be seen as definitive proof of the violent nature of young, white British men?
Or the Sikh woman brutally raped and terrorised in her own home by a man radicalised by anti-Muslim hate. During the attack in Walsall, John Ashby beat the woman with a stick, while also shouting anti-Muslim abuse, wrongly believing her to be Muslim. Ashby was given life in April.
Will the murder of Algasim be seen as definitive proof of the violent nature of young, white British men?
No calls from Farage for rage. No mass rioting.
Or when Callum Mcinally, 22, threatened men, women, and children praying at a Portsmouth mosque with a knife in August, and punched a Muslim worshipper. The 29-year-old white man was arrested and charged with racially aggravated assault. He was given 20 months in October.
No wall-to-wall coverage.
Farage and the right-wing media tell us that two-tier policing is victimising white people. Hampshire Police stop black people 5.1 times as often as whites, but no matter.
When the perpetrators are white and the victims brown, the narrative changes.
Perhaps it might just be that all attacks and murders should be treated seriously by the police, and not simply used as weapons by opportunists to provoke rage, fear, hate and division.
Police conduct has been a problem for black and Asian communities for decades.
Young black and brown Londoners know about two-tier policing. I know a young mixed race man who has been stopped and searched by police on the streets of London numerous times over the years for simply “walking black”. He has never been charged with anything. This is a waste of police time, as well as harassment of a young person going about their business.
Ignore the facts, or make them up
Keir Starmer has pushed back over Farage’s inflammatory intervention, saying it was “time for serious work, not rage” and that there was “no justification for more violence and disorder”. He also criticised Musk for “trying to whip up division” over the Nowak murder.
This is a late conversion to challenging the far right, rather than leaning into their politics as he had done previously.
United action against racism, as seen in the huge Together march in London, proves that there is popular revulsion against Farage and the far right
A politics of solidarity is needed to confront the politics of rage. Politicians cower in the face of the onslaught from journalists and rightwing newspapers. They should push back and ask simple questions. Jumping to conclusions and changing policy in a knee-jerk way in the face of racist mobs is the definition of bad politics.
Henry Novak was not the first person in custody to die while police looked on and ignored their pleas. Police should be trying to protect members of the public, and listening when they say “I’ve been stabbed” and “I can’t breathe”. That is the core of public service, whether the person saying it is white or not.
The bigger question is whether Farage has now gone too far, and the famous moderation and tolerance of the British people will assert itself and stop his march to Downing Street.
A history of colonialism and white supremacy is the other side of Britain that feeds anti-migrant politics, digging deep into an ugly past. Teaching children this history in schools might be a start. Until now, it’s still Tudors and Nazis, but no empire.
United action against racism, as seen in the huge Together march in London this spring, proves that there is popular revulsion against Farage and the far right. Now he has outed himself as a thug leader, as he always was behind the smarmy charm.
Chasing the racist vote of Restore has pushed him into the same camp. The mask is off. Only a concerted pushback will stand a chance of halting the march of rage politics to Downing Street.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
