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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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The bodycam footage of Henry Nowak was released. Mostly peaceful protests ensue.

A summary of the story (most of this info is in the PDF I'm about to link, feel free to skip this section and read it yourself): Henry Nowak had had a few beers (still under the legal limit), saw the Sikh man, Vickrum Digwa, pulled out his phone and started recording, and called out to him a few times "Are you a bad man?", with Digwa replying "I am a bad man." The recording ended shortly after Digwa grabbed Nowak's phone. The judge giving the sentencing said that Nowak was not asking this with hostility in his voice (warning, PDF download); he likely was drawn to ask about it upon seeing the larger of the two knives that Digwa carried. Yes, two knives. Digwa was carrying two ceremonial knives that are permitted to him as a religious article, one of them being a kirpan, an 8 inch one, on a sheath over his waistband.

There is no video record of the struggle after the video ended, but Digwa stabbed Nowak 4 times. The stab to the chest was the fatal one, passing through all of Nowak's clothing and penetrating upwards, between the two uppermost ribs, puncturing a lung and penetrating even deeper to cut a vein behind the collarbone, a wound of 8 cm in depth. There was no apparent injury to Digwa himself, though he claimed his eye had been bruised when the police officers arrived. Digwa took some of his own videos of the dying Nowak after stabbing him, telling him he had not been stabbed. His brother, Gurpreet, made the call to 911. Before the officers arrived, Digwa handed his kirpan to his mother and told her to take it away. He also kept Nowak's phone, and didn't tell the officers he had it. Nobody told the officers that Nowak had been stabbed, certainly not Digwa, who might have been the only one present who would know that.

As shown in the bodycam video, the police arrive for Gurpreet's complaint, briefly listen to Digwa's complaint, and quickly determine that Nowak should be arrested, so they drag his limp body into a better position to be handcuffed. Nowak weakly tells them that he's been stabbed, which the arresting officer impassively denies. The other officers investigate this claim a bit more; the female officer can tell that he's in rough shape, and notes that his pupils aren't even reacting to the light. They tried CPR on him after this, presumably; in the judge's remarks, one officer was horrified to learn of the chest wound after having done chest compressions on him.

So, there's rioting. The BBC doesn't frame it quite as sympathetically as they framed the anti-racism rioting from 6 years ago, though. Which brings us to our George Floyd comparison.

George Floyd was accused of using counterfeit bills. He had been arrested many times before. When they arrested him this time, they knelt on his (neck? upper back?) as he slowly died, claiming, as Henry Nowak had when he died, that he couldn't breathe. The public saw it as an execution of Floyd just because he was black, even though Floyd actually died from the fentanyl in his system, and the kneeling was department protocol (inadvised protocol, if the suspect is having trouble breathing).

In this case, the police presumed guilt of the nearly-dead unarmed man, even as his murderer was still upright and telling all kinds of lies. The public broadly sees this as anti-white bias, paralleling the racial claims from Floyd. Unlike Floyd, Nowak was actually murdered, and he was murdered with a knife that the white members of the public can't even own or carry for self defense. They can't even carry pepper spray. That Digwa as a racial and religious outsider to Britain is also an enhancing factor.

I will interject a brief defense of the police in this case: I took a concealed carry class recently, and I have also watched a few Paul Harrell videos on the subject. In self-defense situations, you want the police on your side. The way to do this is to call them first, before the real attacker does, and establish that you are the injured party, the complainant, and he is the injurer, even if he's lying in a pool of his own blood. Digwa did these things, and hid information from the police, so it's a little more understandable that they made a mistake. In light of the Pakistani rape scandal, however, I also find it understandable if the public doesn't find it understandable, and really do suspect that the police have an anti-white bias. And of course, it's completely unacceptable that they dismissed his claims of being stabbed, especially since he was on the ground when they found him.

For me, there's a lot more meat to these protests than the 2020 BLM protests. If I lived in the UK, I would probably be protesting too (peacefully!). If liberal societies continue along their outgroup-favoritism path, they might find that the post Civil Rights Movement atmosphere, whose protocol they were acting in accordance with, has completely evaporated, and they must forge a new and uncertain path forward. That's the human condition.

The aftermath of the case seems like a classic Toxoplasma of Rage situation - not the controversial, toxoplasmic one that gets everyone whipped up, but the Eric Garner style. The murder, the police behaviour, the family behaviour: everything is so cut and dry terrible that there is no controversy. Even on UK reddits, which are as fortified progressive as you can get, there is almost universal outrage here.

Unlike George Floyd, where his past criminality and the fentanyl accusations gave plenty of meat for culture warriors to help spiral it into a national emergency, Nowak's murder looks destined to fizzle out. There's not even some low sentence for the murderer, while the authorities have been quick to recognize the blowback against his family and sought to charge them with related crimes.

Ironically, if the police had actually found some spicy memes or similar in Nowak's phone, it probably would have helped the overall cause.

I think this is a case where you can sell it to leftists based on how you frame it. If you stick to "police bad", they'll agree, no questions asked. The moment you introduce the "white people are disfavored in two-tier policing" or "deport the immigrants", they'll sour pretty quick and condemn the entirety of the protests.

"white people are disfavored in two-tier policing"

Some extremely stunning loss of message control going on there where the usual suspects are denying that two-tier policing is real while the UK government itself is desperately pleading with the public that it'll review its explicit two-tier policing policies.

Instead of "white people being disfavored," maybe "shitty people who happen to be People of Color will take advantage of the special protections afforded to them to victimize others or avoid consequences. They know that if they say 'Racism' people like those cops or you will immediately jump to their defense. So maybe be slightly less credulous when someone cries wolf/racism." might be more convincing?

Unlike George Floyd, where his past criminality and the fentanyl accusations gave plenty of meat for culture warriors to help spiral it into a national emergency,

I'm fairly keyed into rightwing stuff, and I don't remember this being reported until well after the rioting was a Thing.

Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war. Police have a bad tendency to trust the first calm person to talk to them, which is Digwa claiming that he got attacked first. They especially trust the calm person over the one who is clearly panicking or having some sort of unidentified issue. This is a problem that gets brought up in domestic abuse circles sometimes, that the abuser seems cool and collected when the cops get called in by a neighbor while the victim will often be emotionally frazzled and angry and look like they're a hostile aggressor.

So given this, the police approach the scene and find a calm guy who says he got attacked and another guy who is panicking and freaking out and is like almost every other situation you see a guy freaking out in, probably on drugs. Violence cases are rare, drug guy being crazy or having an overdose is common. They make the assumption this is like every other case. His wounds were in such a way that they weren't easily visible so even when he's saying he got stabbed, they assume it's the insane mutterings of a druggie high off whatever.

The solution is to check anyway but that doesn't necessarily help unless you constantly reinforce it, since the officers will eventually default back to ignoring it again. Heck one of the cops even acknowledged it, like "oh well I think we have to check anyway don't we?". They knew better but they were used to just ignoring it. They really didn't believe he was stabbed and defaulted to their base assumptions and base behaviors

Yes, two knives. Digwa was carrying two ceremonial knives that are permitted to him as a religious article, one of them being a kirpan, an 8 inch one, on a sheath over his waistband.

Now this is something I think is always ridiculous. Religious exemptions are a nonsense idea.

Either a rule is genuinely important to have and exceptions shouldn't be given out (because it's important!), or the rule isn't actually important and therefore shouldn't exist. Almost everything that has a religious exemption to it should just be gone! Why should you lose more freedoms than someone else just because you believe in a different sky man?

Almost everything that has a religious exemption to it should just be gone!

Yes, but are you willing to fight for it? I don't necessarily mean e.g. murdering people (though that happens too) but actively and consistently pursue the change as a major life goal that is so important you are willing to put yourself and others in danger to achieve that? Religious exceptions, at least in theory, are born when some people are, and it's more convenient to let them be as they like than fight with them. However, it turns out that virtually nobody in Britain is willing to fight for the right to bear arms. So, they don't get it. Except for Sikhs which apparently did fight for it, one way or another, and got it. But I haven't heard anybody in Britain saying "we also need this right!" - only "they are not good enough to have this right, take it from them!". With this attitude, no wonder they don't have it.

but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war.

This is the exact element that makes it culture war. (I don't mean to pick on you by saying this.)

Basically, there's a moral and spiritual shift in how the right perceives crime. Violent crimes like these used to be seen as tragedies. Now they are seen as injustices. The difference is that that a tragedy is something that you have to endure and an injustice is something that cries to heaven to be addressed.

Take the murder of Iryna Zarutska. She was stabbed by a career criminal who had been let out of jail before. If this is just a tragedy, there is not much to do except arrest the perpetrator and try to put him in jail. But if this is an injustice, it's an indictment of the entire judicial system that the criminal was not already in jail. The murder isn't just something that happens but is something that was "allowed" to happen.

Anyways the divide is precisely between those who feel apathetic and those who don't. It's not a culture war divide between two opposing interpretations. The scissor statement is whether you care, or whether you don't.

Take the murder of Iryna Zarutska. She was stabbed by a career criminal who had been let out of jail before. If this is just a tragedy, there is not much to do except arrest the perpetrator and try to put him in jail. But if this is an injustice, it's an indictment of the entire judicial system that the criminal was not already in jail. The murder isn't just something that happens but is something that was "allowed" to happen.

This is just a reversion to the - at the time successful - Willie Horton strategy.

I remember seeing a video, I want to say it was in Germany? of a non-white person engaging in a mass stabbing act of terrorism, the police arrived on scene and assisted him because they assumed he was being attack by the native white Germans (and got injured in the process).

This is a pattern.

The white German was attempting to stop the terrorist. The police arrived on the scene and immediately tackled and began cuffing him, at which point the terrorist started stabbing one of the cops while he was restraining the white Good Samaritan.

Honestly, it was poetry.

I remember seeing a video, I want to say it was in Germany? of a non-white person engaging in a mass stabbing act of terrorism, the police arrived on scene and assisted him because they assumed he was being attack by the native white Germans (and got injured in the process).

The Mannheim stabbing (iconic photo included). The police officer actually died as a result.

Despite American police giving it a go and this recent valiant effort from British police, I say German police still holds the title of most cucked police action via the Mannheim stabbing. Total Axis Victory.

The police officer actually died as a result.

Nature is healing.

Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, issued a solemn statement: ‘We will never forget Rouven Laur. He wanted to protect others – and had to pay with his life for this.’ Mannheim’s mayor, Christian Specht, used the occasion to celebrate the city’s diversity, insisting that ‘good and evil are not a question of skin colour or religion’. According to the press, the ceremony concluded with an inter-religious service involving local Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities... Pax Europa – the anti-Islam group the suspect, an Afghan asylum seeker, allegedly targeted – was not merely unwelcome at the official commemoration. Incredibly, its supporters were actively prevented from holding a vigil of their own in Mannheim, too.

The police union’s statement on the banned vigil was all too telling. The anniversary ‘is a day of silent mourning and dignified remembrance of our colleague, Rouven Laur, who was killed in the line of duty’, it said. ‘The fact that a group such as Pax Europa is organising its own vigil… is something we consider to be irreverent and a politically motivated instrumentalisation of a tragic event.’

That’s what upsets me most about Muslims committing violent crimes against the native populace, the backlash against peaceful Muslims.

Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war.

If it's not unique, please provide the other examples of this happening, but with white/non-white flipped.

I don't believe you're saying these things for remotely principled reasons. Based on the many, many comments of yours I've read, I don't believe for one second that you'd view a race-flipped version of this as: sad, but nothing to see here.

I don't believe you're saying these things for remotely principled reasons. Based on the many, many comments of yours I've read,

I wish more people would come to this conclusion in light of his posting history.

Well, I think a lot of people have come to that conclusion; I'm certainly one of them. But you can't win them all. Some people don't use this forum as much as others, and some people don't diligently read the usernames of posters.

Why bother? Anyone who can't contain their urge to use a term like 'sky man' is outing themselves as too obnoxious to worry about. If it were marginally easier to do so I'd probably just hide all comments with such strings.

Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war.

Without commenting on anything about the actual facts of the situation, I think the very fact that one side of the metaphorical culture war believes that it's particularly culture war means that it's necessarily culture war. As in the case of Floyd & Chauvin, it doesn't matter if the killed/killer were unfairly treated because of their race or status or whatever, all that matters is that enough people on any given side believe that it's particularly culture war, and it seems evident to me that enough people do, among the people who do know about it. The absolute total number of people knowing about it is also, of course, particularly culture war, due to how issues like this tend to get covered in mainstream media, and it seems to me that the people who do know about it are trying to increase that absolute total number, which is, again, also particularly culture war.

I was actually in the process of writing a post on this story myself as I was genuinely surprised when a search for "Henry Nowak" turned up nothing given how throughly this story has dominated the right-wing/MAGA media space for the last week.

Here are some of the links I had collected for the post i was writing:

For me the most disturbing thing is how the cops are just chatting amicably with each other the whole time. No apperant concern for the man coughing up blood, no attempt to assess his injuries or render first aid, no call for back-up or an ambulance, just 2.5 minutes of casually watching an 18 year-old gurgle and choke like this is just another day at the office.

Yes, this is the same impulse that caused me to write what I did. I was talking about it with a friend I talk about politics with in a Discord server and found that there was actually a lot to say about this one. Too bad I beat you to the punch! You had a lot of good links there.

Too bad I beat you to the punch! You had a lot of good links there

Don't worry about it.

I was genuinely surprised when a search here for Henry Nowak turned up nothing given how throughly this has dominated the right-wing/MAGA media space for the last week.

There's so many stories that I just gloss over nowadays. It's been years since I noticed that somehow, no matter how egregious the situation, we never get a reaction symmetrical to the MeeToo / BLM / Smirkening / PrettiGood cases, so I don't even put pen to paper unless there's something I find personally interesting in a story.

Vickrum Digwa’s family ‘deeply sorry’ to Henry Nowak’s relatives - but warn his murder should not ‘inflame division’

This is one of those multicultural, creedal national, propositional nation fault points. The way to not "inflame division" is to ensure there's no other side. Not "inflaming division" would entail Digwa's family turning him in. It would involve his community turning on him, condemning and outcasting him. That's the bare minimum buy-in for a post-racial or multicultural society. You have to be willing to put the common good, including for non-ethnics, above base tribalism and ethnic nationalism.

Instead, Digwa's family actively helped him lie and cover up his murder. They were screaming "Racist!" at the judge during the trial. The Sikh community online seems to be largely pushing the completely counterfactual story invented by Digwa, in which Henry was a violent racist and Digwa was only defending himself.

If I were British, I would demanding that every member of that community who wasn't willing to side with the outraged native Briton protestors against their own co-ethnics be deported, regardless of immigration status. The other acceptable option would be fedposting in Minecraft.

Police have a bad tendency to trust the first calm person to talk to them, which is Digwa claiming that he got attacked first.

Show me an example of a white Briton (or hell, let's make it easier for you: a white person from anywhere) stabbing a brown man, the police arriving on the scene to find the white aggressor clearly uninjured and the brown man visibly incapacitated, the white man claiming to have been attacked first, and on his word alone, the police handcuffing the visibly incapacitated brown man. If you can show me that, or even something vaguely analogous, I will consider the possibility that there are no real CW aspects to this awful case.

the police approach the scene and find a calm guy who says he got attacked and another guy who is panicking and freaking out

Nowak was not "panicking and freaking out". He was lying on his side, clearly incapacitated, and summoning what little strength he had remaining, he claimed that he'd been stabbed and couldn't breathe. Vickrum's father even told the officers that Nowak kept falling over. I believe the family made up some silly cover story about Nowak attacking Digwa, attempting to flee and cutting himself on a fence. Even if that was how Nowak got injured, it was obvious from the first that he was injured and Digwa wasn't. They should have attempted to render medical care to the clearly injured or incapacitated person. Instead, they put him in cuffs because he allegedly did a racism.

Now this is something I think is always ridiculous. Religious exemptions are a nonsense idea.

Oh, so in other words there are culture war aspects to this story? You changed your tune from one end of the comment to the other.

Not a clear example but your question makes me think of the Ahmaud Arbery case, where the killing was video-taped and no charged for months.

Not a clear example but your question makes me think of the Ahmaud Arbery case, where the killing was video-taped and no charged for months.

The video shows he got shot at only as he charged the shooter, and only actually got shot after he landed a few punches.

The fact that their base behaviours seem to be to trust the brown guy levelling accusations of racism over the white guy who's dying on the ground is basically what people are upset about.

The culture war aspects are:

  • Digwa immediately knew that the best way to get the police on his side was to accuse his victim of saying something racist.
  • Digwa was permitted to carry a huge weapon openly in public, despite having been banned from his temple for stealing knives.
  • Digwa was in the country in the first place.
  • Digwa's family openly conspired to pervert justice, and clearly considered Nowak to be a foreign devil not a human being deserving of care and treatment or even just calling an ambulance.
  • The Prime Minister and other major officials are clearly incapable of summoning up even a fraction of the outrage they assure us they felt over Floyd.
  • This is the third atrocity where fears of racism have resulted in white people suffering or dying whilst ignored by authority figures, and something like the tenth where white people have been victimised at the hand of imported ethnics.
  • Just like always, the response of the government has been to deny, obfuscate and delay.

And that's just for starters.

over the white guy who's dying on the ground is basically what people are upset about.

To be clear here, they didn't know he was dying. The wound was not visible from their perspective.

I don't know if they ever said it anywhere but most likely they just assumed that he was pretty much every other case of a guy freaking out, an addict having an issue.

To be clear here, they didn't know he was dying. The wound was not visible from their perspective.

What constitutes "knowledge" here? The victim clearly articulated several times that he had, in fact, been stabbed and could not breathe. If you invoke enough skepticism, nobody can truly "know" anything.

At the minimum, they knew Nowak was lying on the ground, immobile and incapacitated, while the man who claimed to have been attacked by him was standing, talkative, lucid and displaying no signs of injury whatsoever (absurdly pointing to a fictitious bruise on his eyelid to bolster his claim to have acted in self-defence). I don't think you need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that a) however the altercation might have transpired, Nowak did not pose an active threat to anyone at the time the police arrived on the scene (so cuffing him was unnecessary) and b) Digwa and his family weren't being entirely truthful in their versions of events.

They should have known he was dying. They should certainly have managed to notice his injuries while they were handcuffing him for doing a racism. And they need to be extensively and explicitly re-trained that:

  • if somebody is on the ground, you look to them and you check them for injuries first, as you say
  • you disregard any accusations of racism from an ethnic minority until there is time to do a proper investigation; you do not allow it to prejudice you when you approach a scene, you do not allow yourself to be influenced by thoughts of racial activists on Twitter, and you do recognise it as a tactic very commonly deployed by ethnic minorities to avoid guilt and gain sympathy
  • you know and remain aware of the fact that an ethnic minority is far more likely to murder or assault a white man than the opposite, and you act accordingly

And that's just lessons for individual policemen to learn. The police force and the government is a whole other story.

A skinny 18 year-old with combed hair wearing a white shirt and tie is so unlikely to be a drug addict that you have to already be profiling like a progressive to consider it. Kid is calling out that he can't breathe and that he's been stabbed while one of the officers tells him that he has not been.

The likeliest explanation is that they believed the stabber because progressive values encourage righteous fury at any accusations of racism. The next likeliest explanation is that they profiled the kid on some other class basis, which is one of those bizarre Britishisms that does come up again and again whenever Britain's new minorities attack lower-class whites. Both of those possibilities are far likelier than a simple misunderstanding.

His wounds were in such a way that they weren't easily visible so even when he's saying he got stabbed, they assume it's the insane mutterings of a druggie high off whatever.

How could a man with four stab wounds, one of which is 8cm deep, not have any visible injuries? What's the source for this claim?

It was winter so he wore a heavy jacket, and the bleeding seems to have been mostly internal. From the linked PDF:

The consequent bleeding flowed into his chest cavity. ,The pathologist, Amanda Jeffrey, found 1200 ml, or over 2 pints, of blood there.

Though I saw some mention of witnesses saying his mouth kept filling with blood (though after my first comment turning out to be false, I should point out it's only something I saw skimming the feeds, and don't have link for).

EDIT: Oh, actually it's kinda in the bodycam footage. One of the first things the killer's father says is "he has a mouth full of blood". Also you can hear him choking on his own blood.

How could a man with four stab wounds, one of which is 8cm deep, not have any visible injuries? What's the source for this claim?

It's obvious the injuries were not very visible to the officers just by looking at their behavior! They don't see any wounds when first addressing him and they don't believe him when he says he was stabbed, being actively dismissive towards it at first.

His face had been slashed, according to the closing judicial remarks. Even if we assume it wasn't obvious, they can't have looked even slightly closely.

This is equally well explained by the police being trained in systemically racist ideological terms to presume the worst of anyone accused of racism. They didn't even check. They didn't even ask "where". They just denied it without a moment's thought. "Don't think you have, mate" is a term that is going to live in infamy.

Derek Chauvin also didn't see any wounds.

Assuming the officers acted reasonably when arguing that they acted reasonably is questionable.

Nothing the cops said suggests they saw the wounds and then decided to ignore it, as opposed to them just not seeing the wounds to begin with.

Maybe they didn't see it because it wasn't visible, or maybe they were all incompetents with 20/200 vision. I don't know why they didn't see it, but it seems like they just didn't.

Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war

Quick sanity check: what is a "particularly culture war" situation. Was George Floyd one?

So Derek Chauvin did nothing wrong?

I wouldn't say "nothing" - he probably should have noticed the suspect is ODing and modify his behavior accordingly, and then maybe the whole debacle wouldn't happen. But he is certainly not guilty of murder. He was sacrificed because the politics demanded it.

I never said the police behaved appropriately. In fact the last paragraph should suggest I believe otherwise and this is a failure in both police behavior and in training. They should not just be assuming everyone having a crisis is just a druggie or a schizo.

Floyd was actually a druggie. So how was the police reaction to him worse?

And your first three paragraphs apply much more directly to the George Floyd incident.

Do you not see the parallel, or are you experiencing a pathological nervousness about inadvertently making an argument that could get you fired (or killed and your pleas of help mocked by the police)?

I think the entire family is complicit in detestable tribalistic behaviour here. They deliberately tried to pervert the course of justice by conspiring to hide the murder weapon. The brother and the murderer spoke punjabi about their need for an alibi in the back of the police car on the way to the station. The mother removed the weapon from the crime scene.

Beyond the failure in the police response, the largest thing that makes me upset about this is that while the encounter between Digwa and Nowak occurred at around 11:17pm, the police did not arrive on the scene until 11:37pm. The family knew that Nowak had been stabbed. They called the police and either did not describe the serious wounds of Nowak, or otherwise did not call an ambulance. All of this talk from the pathologist about how the police's actions could not have prevented Nowak's death are irrelevant in so far as an ambulance could have been requested by the family and saved Nowak's life. Instead they let him bleed out.

If leaving the scene of a car accident can be considered gross negligence to the point of manslaughter, why isn't this family being adequately punished along those lines? The system is impotently stacking weapons charges on the murderer, his father and brother, but nothing about how they let him bleed out for an hour before the police arrived.

Edit: I should add there is viral picture of henry being handcuffed floating around with his anemic, sliced hand visable (SFL, but pretty chilling).

2nd Edit: Changed times to match telegraph article, after reading pathologists comments, death was certain.

Edit: I should add there is viral picture of henry being handcuffed floating around with his anemic, sliced hand visable (SFL, but pretty chilling).

That's an AI "upscale". The bodycam footage is far lower quality, and quite a bit less demonic.

I believe the mother has been convicted, but you're absolutely right that the father and brother are also complicit in perverting the course of justice.

sorry, what culture war aspect is there here? UK speedrunning institutional paralysis when the magic word of racism is invoked was the grooming gang case, chris kaba proved that the first instinct of the UK establishment is to find blane in the whites for not letting themselves be victimized by the browns who must have had cause to harm whites if harm was inflicted. Is there anyone who believes that the UK of all places has any appetite to reverse the charities extended to brown minorities? Consideration is the privilege of browns, rich whites can fob off the harms of lacking consideration with the shield of money, and the UK establishment whose primary enemy is the poor native whites will continue happily bringing in either muslim or antimuslim browns depending on whichever flavour of ghoul occupies downing street. Liberal societies will not accept that their axioms were blown apart by reality, they will simply redefine what reality meant so that the outgroup remains noble even when bragging to their kin that the gora are cowards that let their women be raped freely and willingly offer their own as exp for murderhobos.

I feel like this being like street-level instantaneous paralysis in the face of 'racism' is a bigger indictment than it being bureaucratic/legal policy. If a judge lets off a random serial criminal it's bad, but if police flat-out decline to arrest or disable them in the first place it's very very very bad

Is the video taken by the victim available anywhere? All I see is bodycam footage. Or the videos taken by the perp where he says the stabbed guy isn't stabbed?

Neither of those videos have been released. @FtttG already told you about the murderer's video, but I can't find any reason why the Snapchat videos are not public. I guess they must have been shown to the court, but not made public.

According to Millennial Woes, even the jury weren't shown some of these videos because they were considered too disturbing.

I got into an argument this morning with some woke gobshite who insists there's nothing to see here and is more concerned about a hypothetical far-right backlash against the UK's Sikh community than he is about Henry Nowak and for the love of God will that one Norm Macdonald clip ever stop being relevant.

I made the mistake of watching the bodycam footage yesterday. Just reading about this case made me feel angry and upset enough. Watching the bodycam footage was ten times worse.

The murderer smugly claiming to have been assaulted, pointing to a non-existent bruise on his eyelid as evidence. With his last few breaths, Nowak begging the police for help and insisting that he's been stabbed, only to be calmly told by them that he hasn't been. The police officers' inexplicable insistence on cuffing him in spite of the fact that, even if he hadn't been stabbed, he was clearly incapacitated and posing no active threat. One of the police officers calmly instructing his colleague to get the Digwa family's details, apparently not even considering the possibility that one of them might have stabbed Nowak and that perhaps they ought to be arrested.

I don't know how anyone can look at this case and claim in all seriousness that the UK doesn't have a two-tier justice system.

Yes, that's another parallel to Floyd. That bodycam footage was really, really infuriating. I had to remind myself that the kid was already as good as dead when the police showed up, rather than that they caused his death.

It’s incredibly hard to emotionally ignore the fact that his last moments were so hopeless and alone

Millions of people (millions of Britons) will just ignore it, just as they tried to ignore the story entirely. Because it's inconvenient. Because it makes them look bad. Because if their own logic about systems were applied consistently, they would have to grapple with the fact that they were and are complicit in the murder of Henry Nowak. The Be Kind people who think they embrace empathy are literally out in force doing the Norm McDonald meme and I've yet to see a single one offer more than the stingiest, passive voice PR statement - and that only under duress.

Digwa did these things, and hid information from the police, so it's a little more understandable that they made a mistake. In light of the Pakistani rape scandal, however, I also find it understandable if the public doesn't find it understandable, and really do suspect that the police have an anti-white bias.

Also worth mentioning, after Nowak died in their custody, they thought it important to search his phone for racism. When that turned up nothing, they went to his father to inform him of what happened, and searched his phone as well, hoping they can find some racism there. Whatever you think of their behavior in the heat of the moment, their action afterwards is not indicative of an honest mistake, in my opinion.

This specific claim appears to be the product of Chinese whispers; Millennial Woes's exhaustive account of the entire incident can find no evidence for it.

Damn what an infuriating read. I'm torn though, everything the murder and his family did is beyond evil. However is there any evidence that Novak was accosted without any provocation on his part? It sounds like he was drunk and drunkenly his called out to the non-drunk guy with a big fucking sword, and tried to banter with him in an insulting way. Like does he have any survival instincts? You do not insult the guy with the sword. You don't acknowledge them, you just keep fucking walking, silently. I've seen people with guns, knives, or just general dangerous dispositions while drunk, out and about, you better believe I don't engage, interact or acknowledge them. I definitely don't try to be funny and insult them.

Maybe brits are just stupid and coddled to the point that they can't survive in a world filled with non-coddled, tribal savages. Maybe its an American thing to have at least some danger sense and self awareness. Assume everyone is carrying, be nice, and ignore them.

EDIT: This is the part I'm talking about, like dude just shup up and keep walking.

Nowak resumed filming. The footage shows Digwa walking away, and Nowak saying: “Innit bad man, what bad man. You’re a bad man, say you’re a bad man, go on.”

It's clear to me Digwa is a malcontent, angry at the world, angry at society, and not in a good mood. Some drunk white guy starts talking shit and he just snaps, right to murder, torture, gaslighting, etc. Novak is the effigy for all his hate at the world.

It seems obvious to me that Nowak was probably somewhat drunk and belligerent, and probably in some way taunted Digwa. Of course I am wholly on the side of the right in this incident; in any case, whatever Nowak did ought not to be used to justify a death sentence.

But, let’s be real, violent criminals of the non-homeless-schizo type (and Digwa wasn’t in that group, if anything heralding from a moderately competent minority, probably average IQ) don’t randomly murder people with zero provocation.

Digwa was caught on video previously in a road rage incident in which he seemed to be threatening the other driver with his weapon out. He was reportedly obsessed with bladed weapons, and had gotten in trouble (charges dropped, obviously) for stealing some from his local Sikh temple.

"He's from a moderately competent community" seems less relevant than "He seems like a wannabe violent asshole". There were a few guys I knew when I was younger, where if I heard they'd done something like this, my response would be "Yeah, I can see Dale doing that." Talking about the low crime rate in our town in general would be silly.

Sure, normal people don’t murder strangers (or indeed anyone), every murderer is an extreme outlier by the very fact of their crime. This is true even for “violent assholes”.

But I don’t think this is an unprovoked random killing. I don’t think he sees this kid walking by himself from a distance and decides “I’m going to kill him”. The nature of the crime, the time, and the perpetrator don’t match that.

Where young men obsessed with weapons do just go out and use them (some school shooters, for example), they usually plan their “mission” extensively. They either go for huge impact / publicity / casualties and/or plot some kind of escape route (Digwa’s strategy was clearly thought out after the event). The same is true for most racially and/or religiously motivated attacks by angry young men.

To me by far the most plausible type explanation is that this was some young white ‘frat bro’ (the UK equivalent are probably these university sports teams) type who taunted Digwa (who probably had some racial prejudice given his immediate reaching for that excuse) and he reacted extremely violently, seeing it as a ‘just’ response. This lines up with eg Nowak filming the interaction (probably not out of fear), “what are you gonna do little guy, stab me?” style.

You can’t say things like this without people thinking you’re justifying the killing, which I’m most definitely not, but I find it extremely implausible this was a completely random (or random racially motivated, in that he picked a white guy at random) attack. The outrage is the police response, and maybe more broadly mass immigration in general (although the Southport murders were more impactful there).

"He seems like a wannabe violent asshole".

I think this is accurate. He's a thug, which a chip on his shoulder looking for an excuse to pop off. Clearly has anger issues. As Catsnakes said, he's a wannabe gangster with a sword.

Agreed, just because the victim was an idiot does not make the crime permissible. Having lived in a major metro and needing to take buses and subways home while drunk, even the schizo's generally (as in I nor any friends have ever seen/heard of this) won't physically attack you if you don't acknowledge them.

There is random schizo violence, NYC homeless schizos pushing people onto the subway tracks for no reason as the train arrives, but Digwa clearly doesn’t fit this psychological profile.

The accounts I had read gave the impression Digwa was considered by his own community as overly enthusiastic about knives and swords, in that context, the provocation that led to him murdering Nowak might have been a mere pretext for doing something he's always dreamed of doing.

I think that’s very plausible, yes.

Sounds like Nowak accurately identified what kind of guy he was dealing with (a coward who wanted to think he was hard, worthy of ridicule) and his only mistake was being drunk enough to verbalize it.

His mistake was that he didn't just keep walking. Say in this drunken haze, you correctly identify the guy with the shortsword and the honor culture, is just a pozer who thinks he's tough. Do you really need to insult his honor and force him to do something about it? This is the shit I'm talking about. Like just shut up and walk, its not your problem.

Note that Brits will never see an armed man in the course of ordinary life. What Digwa was carrying was highly illegal... for anyone except a member of his I'm-so-special religious group.

Maybe brits are just stupid and coddled to the point that they can't survive in a world filled with non-coddled, tribal savages. Maybe its an American thing to have at least some danger sense and self awareness. Assume everyone is carrying and be nice to them.

Until the turn of the century Britain had, mostly, successfully made the country a reasonably gentle society for decent people. It was not designed for tribal savages. This was a good thing and its unraveling is a tragedy.

It was not designed for tribal savages. This was a good thing and its unraveling is a tragedy.

It's really not. A society that educates out bloody survival knowledge from its populous is a failed society. You don't need to have a society that is designed for tribal savages to also have a society that acknowledges how the real world works. Creating a bunch of quokkas is not a good thing. Also we are talking about the same Britain right? The one with football hooligans??

Note that Brits will never see an armed man in the course of ordinary life.

Its a fucking shortsword, I don't need to see a man with a shortsword and a scowl on his face to know I'm not going to interact with him in any but the most polite and avoidant manner.

They had a society that was designed for the well-heeled and gentile yet also knew how the real world works, and they psyopped themselves into giving it up. They gave their brains and balls away along with the rest of their colonial possessions.

They gave their brains and balls away along with the rest of their colonial possessions.

That's an unfair characterization. They sold their brains and balls and the rest of their colonial possessions to Uncle Sam, because the European powers (and the UK) were back-to-back World War losers.

The Allied powers like to delude themselves into thinking their contributions made a difference but, uh, no? Most of the materiel came from American factories, and Americans accepted the price for that materiel in mineral rights and real estate.

It wasn't "giving away". It was war reparations. The rest of Western Europe has paid similarly.

I think lumping balls and brains along colonial possessions is the likely incorrect assumption. The post WWII UK still tried to pull stuff like the Suez Canal. I think the loss of the "balls and brains" has happened much more recently vs the colonial possessions being, as you said, war reparations of the Americans for needing to come in and save the Brits.

America definitely isn't holding Europe's balls or brains. A case can be made that America likes a weaker Europe so as to not challenge the American Hegemony, but internal matters like immigration and culture seems to be a nutcracker the Euro's designed all on their own.

I'm pretty sure this is both a total non-sequitur and historically inaccurate. Go derail the thread with nonsense elsewhere.

Apparently. I'm not sure its possible for the British to un-psyop their society back. It would require acknowledging some very-uncomfortable realities about the world that would be impolite and ungentlemanly. I can't imagine the culture of the stiff upper lip can have that sort of honest dialogue

Who's 'they'? This is like 10% of the population max. They've just got a stranglehold on the organs of power.

I can only assume the knives Digwa was carrying weren't visible on his person when Nowak ran into him. If so, I doubt the possibility even occurred to him that Digwa was armed. I certainly wasn't aware of religious exemptions to the UK's LOICENSE laws prior to this case, and Nowak probably wasn't either.

More cynically, one might say that a lifetime of antiracist education completely compromised Nowak's ability to assess threats in a sensible way. It simply did not occur to him that the scary-looking Indian in religious garb walking around with a scowl on his face (and perhaps visibly carrying ceremonial weapons) might not respond too favourably to playful banter.

I can only assume the knives Digwa was carrying weren't visible on his person when Nowak ran into him.

You are aware the massive dagger he used to kill him was visible on his chest when the police were speaking to him, right?

No, it wasn't. The dagger he used to kill him was on a sheath on his belt. But it wasn't even present when the police arrived, as the original post says. He gave it to his mother to take it into the house so it wouldn't be found. As for the blade on his chest, the bodycam footage is too low resolution for me to identify a knife there.

However, you are correct that Nowak might have seen the blade, considering that location.

More cynically, one might say that a lifetime of antiracist education completely compromised Nowak's ability to assess threats in a sensible way. It simply did not occur to him that the scary-looking Indian in religious garb walking around with a scowl on his face (and perhaps visibly carrying ceremonial weapons) might not respond too favourably to playful banter.

I buy this, I think the article points out the 8-incher was externally carried and is what Novak got stabbed with. I'd bet that is externally carried. But it would make sense to me that a lifetime of not-noticing + mainstream British education has made an entire generation of kids be unable to exist in a world with any sort of real-world aggression.

f so, I doubt the possibility even occurred to him that Digwa was armed.

Note: however, a lifetime of multicultural education should inform you that Sihks as a religion are specifically armed. I learned this shit decades ago in social studies, in a fly-over state in America. Long before I actually ever interacted with a Sihk in person.

Wow, what a great account! I will have to check Millennial Woes in the future, as the quality of that post is much better than my own and tells me many details I did not know.

Oh damn. Thanks for the correction.

The amount of meat has never been an issue. Tony Timpa was just as bad as George Floyd, but Floyd was manufactured into an outrage during an election season by sympathetic media wanting to whip up a race war to discredit the sitting President.

People have noticed the differences, but I need to remind everyone that the difference in coverage is because the official propaganda only ever goes one way: anti-white.

Floyd's optics were the issue and most people being completely ignorant about how chokes are even applied. I wouldn't necessarily want to be in Floyd's position since it'd be painful but there is no positional asphyxiation possible there.

Based on Minneapolis police rules, Chauvin was probably in the clear until Floyd went unconscious ~5 minutes in, at which point he definitely should have gotten off his neck.

It's hard to tell if another officer was holding down his legs, but either way a knee on your neck while lying chest down can very easily restrict your chest from expanding enough to get air. When people OD from fent they usually passively conk out instead of panicking about being unable to breathe.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007159353/george-floyd-arrest-death-video.html

And Daniel Shaver was so much worse.

Never forget: the cop having "you're fucked" written on the dust cover of his AR-15 was a fact not heard by the jury.

Another bodycam video I wish I hadn't watched. I can still hear him drunkenly begging the police not to shoot him. For the life of me, I cannot fathom why they didn't just tell him to lie face down and put his hands on his head.

It's something that seems not uncommon in tense, high-stress police interactions. Multiple cops screaming unintelligible and contradictory orders at people. Midwits screaming at individuals with room-temperature IQs. While screaming in tense situations is natural, I think it also comes from police "verbal judo" training; which was even discussed in the Chauvin trial. I’m sure being in control is central, but I bet “being authoritative” is a big part of it, and for midwit cops that just turns into yelling.

Shaver taught me that in the unlikely event I get in a situation where I'm being screamed at by multiple cops I'm just gonna kneel with my hands on my head and let them do the rest of the work. They'll probably throw my face into the ground, maybe break my arm, but better than playing death Simon says until they shoot me.

The thing I want the most from police reform is a script for people interacting with police. Figure out the motions/actions a police officer is the most concerned about, figure out how a citizen can make it clear they're NOT doing that, broadly publish it as a best practices and teach it in school, then train the police to be expecting the script at least as a "this person seems to be cooperating".

For example, it seems like traffic stops can get scary because it's hard to tell if someone's reaching for a gun. Maybe the script should be "person being pulled over keeps their hands on the wheel until the officer comes over and can see what they're doing". And now if I'm pulled over, I can do that, the officer knows what to do with it, and my action isn't something he's worried about.

Standardize behavior on both sides as much as we can, and it decreases tension in most situations and makes it easier to see when things might heat up.

"person being pulled over keeps their hands on the wheel until the officer comes over and can see what they're doing"

I seem to recall being literally taught this in my drivers ed class, although admittedly that was a while ago now. In particular, do not go digging in your glove box for proof of insurance.

Although the "don't talk to police" lecture is related, and also worth teaching.

But it would make sense to explicitly teach expectations in schools.

For example, it seems like traffic stops can get scary because it's hard to tell if someone's reaching for a gun. Maybe the script should be "person being pulled over keeps their hands on the wheel until the officer comes over and can see what they're doing". And now if I'm pulled over, I can do that, the officer knows what to do with it, and my action isn't something he's worried about.

I wasn't handed a script when I was studying for my driver's permit/license, but this very thing was exactly what was drilled into me as the thing to do when pulled over by the police. Both hands glued to the wheel unless or until instructed otherwise. In general, the fact that you need to always show both your hands, don't reach for something that's hidden, and don't make sudden movements are what I'd consider the basic "script" for interacting with police which I had picked up growing up. I didn't grow up in an environment that had much police interaction, and I haven't had any meaningful interaction with police as an adult, so I can't remember where I picked up this "script," though.

We have such scripts. The problem is that they are so degrading to the non-police person that many self-respecting people simply cannot manage to engage in them.

Huh, that's interesting to me, I must have missed them growing up.

I have some vague heuristics (no sudden movements, don't reach for things at your waist) but I was never actually taught them, I just kind of picked them up, often from watching people do very badly by not following them. Details like "would the officer prefer I already have my license and registration ready, or should I just wait until he comes up" I still don't know, and I wouldn't be surprised if different police have different answers.

The degradation aspect in particular is interesting to me, because my interactions with police (even while being in the wrong, albeit for minor things) have generally been as pleasant and respectful as they could be, and I genuinely would like to make their job easier in the future if I can. I'd much rather interact with an officer who's not worried about what I might do, and I respect the job he's doing even if I'd rather not be part of it in the moment. Can you give examples of the kind of thing that people wouldn't do?

I guess a reminder to me that police officers differ: I know you've talked before about the frustrations with NJ cops, and I am in a different state and level of urbanization than that, so it's probably not surprising that I have different experiences.

"verbal judo"

Every single hyperlink about "verbal judo" claims it's about using positive language to de-escalate tense situations, not screaming at your opponent.