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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.
It's interesting how much of the discourse is centered around Sikhs-as-good-'uns.
Some implications for how people see other cases in their heart of hearts.
I feel like 'Sikh culture hews closer to European norms and is generally less a cause of friction than other subcontinental groups' doesn't negate Digwa being a particularly argumentative individual.
I'd still rather have a median Sikh neighbor than a median subcontinental neighbor even in light of this particular happening
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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).
I remember reading a satire article (which I'm unable to find now) where the title was something like "'What Are You Looking At?!' Says Man Who Has Been Trying to Get Your Attention for the Last Fifteen Minutes".
I routinely encounter ferociously angry and frustrated people like this who are clearly spoiling for a fight and actively looking for any pretext, no matter how feeble, to start a fight with someone smaller than them. My guess is that Nowak said something utterly innocuous that a more level-headed person would have responded to with good humour, but he had the poor fortune to pick the most mentally unstable young man in Southampton.
The quoted bit from the article/videos sounds like he essentially was telling Digwa, "What a right proper gangster you are, I bet you think you are such a naughty boy and all the bollocks". How innocuous you think that is up to you, but that would start shit across the pond in America if you said it to some inner-city wannabe gangster too.
Have you seen the picture of the murderer. He is a dweeb. He doesn't look like a gangster
Who Novak or Digwa? (why do i keep wanting to type out Digby...) Novak is getting that post death glow up pictures, same shit the media does when some black kid gets shot. Digwa looks like he's dressed in all black carrying a sword at his hip.
Regardless, trying to start shit with someone who is spoiling for a fight and has a deadly weapon on them, no matter how "dweeby" they look, is darwin-award level stupid. Just. Keep. Walking.
UK is a tiny island, walk long enough and you just end up running into the same guy or one of his cousins.
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I don't think that's true at all, for a couple of reasons.
Nowak had no reason to think Digwa was violent based on the fact he was carrying a ceremonial blade. Sikhs are known to be particularly well-behaved, with low crime rates, high education rates and high salaries. Scotsmen wearing kilts wear daggers and sometimes larger dirks (a similar size to the knife used in the murder) and nobody assumes danger because it doesn't mean danger.
Nowak had no reason to know that Digwa was spoiling for a fight based on his behaviour. Read the Millennial Woes summary of what happened. By the time Nowak realised that Digwa was looking for violence, Digwa had already decided to stab him.
Nowak didn't 'start shit'. He was bantering in a friendly way. Nowak didn't touch Digwa or say anything rude or threatening to him. He was extremely unlucky that the guy he was trying to banter with happened to have violent fantasies.
There are about 200,000 Sikh men in the UK, along with maybe 2.5 million Scotsmen. Most adult Scotsmen have worn a sgian dubh and maybe 10% of Sikh men are initiated and so wear the kirpan. Plus tradesmen carry knives openly. Bantering with a guy wearing a knife isn't acting stupidly, and it's only with the benefit of hindsight (plus some falsehoods I have detailed) can you say that he was.
I did read the Millennial Woes summary, that's the thread we are in...
We are going to disagree pretty egregiously on this one. I don't speak British slang well, but it seems to me, it looks like he said "Wow what a bad ass you are, such a tough guy, I bet you think you are so cool you fucking coward" That's not "friendly" banter. Nowak was definitely provocative and taunting him. We can agree he didn't touch him or threaten him. But that sort of taunting, at the right person carries a very large risk that they will inflict violence on you. Come to Chicago and say that to a bunch of hood rats, I'd bet money that they would A) Beat you badly, B) Stab you, C) Shoot you, or D) All of the above. It is putting yourself in risky position no matter how you slice it.
So dude just called him out as a "bad man" for no reason? Novak stopped walking for what reason?
I'm sorry, but normies, which Nowak was, do not look at crime states, education rates, and salaries. They are not judging people on their socio-economic group status like some autistic HBD person.
Honestly this whole discussion, is an example on how people don't want any personal responsibility for their own actions. Nowak was not some bystander who got stabbed, he engaged with a dangerous person, which was a dumb fucking move, and then taunted that dangerous person, which lead to him getting stabbed, to death. Everyone defending him wants to ignore his personal responsibility in the matter. I need to go through my past responses and see how many of you were making pro-personal responsibilities and risk-based arguments on the topic of abortion, because any who were are blatantly hypocritical.
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The question is, were those words the opening, or was there previous interaction that didn't get caught on camera?
Because that seems to me like a strange thing to say to a random passerby, but a natural thing to say to someone who's been trying to intimidate you or picking a fight with you.
I'm entirely speculating, but if you read between the lines a bit, Digwa (not overly trustworthy) says something about Novak shoulder checking him on the street. They likely both bumped into each other and both refused to give way. This increasing seems to be two wannabe tough guys except one of them has a shortsword.
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There's a lot of room between "completely random" and "accidentally provoked because the attacker required neglible provocation". Maybe Digwa was already in a seething rage for unrelated reasons, and some mild comment after bumping into a stranger (or just the bumping) set him off. My point is that the plausible, likely area of their potential interactions includes quite a bit of "Henry did literally nothing wrong".
Do you have any fucking idea how insane you sound? Just slightly change what you say and see if its still appropriate
"Maybe that woman said something that provoked the man."
In modern society thats okay to say that about women. Why the fuck do you think because he is a sikh that its okay?
I'm not really sure what you're saying here, the language seems a bit confused. It sounds like you think I was excusing Digwa, and speculating that Henry deserved it. Maybe I was unclear, but I was making the exact opposite point. I very much doubt that Henry did anything that could have passed any remotely sane muster for being a proper "provocation". I was allowing the possibility that some normal, mundane, innocuous thing was interpreted as provocation by a man who was already a violent asshole.
Digwa deserves to die, his family deserves to be severely punished and deported, and any of his community that has a problem with that should also be deported citizen or not.
But that consideration of moral and legal blame is separate from trying to unravel why the violent asshole picked this particular target to murder. As rafa said, he doesn't seem to match the kind of schizophrenic who is truly random in their attacks.
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If we were to tsk-tsk at Nowak, at some point we’d just be reinventing the “something must had triggered the pitbull’s reactivity” when a child got mauled or the “someone must had said the n-word” when a senior American citzen got bustled in the street by an urban youth, but for the Sikh edition when a white Brit got stabbed to death.
If one were to apply inebriation standards from other domains: to the extent Nowak had a few drinks, he was intoxicated and could not consent to the initial conversation with Digwa, much less the interaction that followed. Thus further exonerating Nowak and further implicating Digwa for taking advantage of a drunk young man’s mental state.
And even in an alternate universe where he saw Digwa and proceeded to hit him with the slur to end all slurs completely unprompted, that wouldn't really justify the escalation
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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.
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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.
I think I agree with your framing that this boils down to a UK frat bro vs angry honor culture immigrant type-situation.
Novak misunderstood the rules of engagement in these types of situations and thought he could spout off words because violence is so verboten in modern society. Digwa comes from an honor culture where violence (even lethal violence) is an adequate response to slights, and tribal family loyalty outweighs societal notions of fairness that WEIRD people have. This created a lethal situation for Novak as Digwa responded to his taunting with unrestricted levels of violence. His family backed him up by closing ranks, as is expected of community oriented values. A tragedy of multicultural origins with all too human details.
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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.
And yet his community continued to allow him to carry a knife, knowing he was a threat to the broader community. They are not exacltly covering themselves in glory if that was the case.
I think this justifies revoking their religious exemption. They can't be trusted.
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I think that’s very plausible, yes.
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