We are right to feel rage over the death of Henry Nowak

Are you raging over the death of Henry Nowak? Has the horror of that boy’s slaying, the lynching-like savagery of it, incensed you? Did you feel molten fury as you watched the bodycam footage of those lowlife officers dragging Henry across the harsh gravel? Were you consumed by wrath seeing this dying boy be libelled as a racist by his killer? If so, then according to the chattering classes you are tantamount to a fascist. It is you and your febrile emotions that pose the truest threat to the nation, even more so than knife-wielding scum like Vickrum Digwa.

What has happened in Britain over the past 48 hours has been extraordinary. Even as a seasoned critic of the hubris of our rulers, I’ve been shocked by the speed with which they’ve turned this atrocity into yet another soapbox from which to harangue the little people over what we think, what we say, even what we feel. More ink is now being spilled on the ‘problematic’ emotions of the masses than on the cruel killing of young Henry. We live under a regime so morally remote, so far up the fundament of its own self-righteousness, that it frets more over the justified rage of ordinary people than the unjustified destruction of a lad’s life.

It was comments made by Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, that tore off the smug set’s veil of concern for Henry to reveal the classist sneer beneath. He called for ‘pure, cold rage’ in response to Henry’s awful, lonely death. Cue rage – ironically – across the faux-liberal establishment. The bourgeois press fizzes with angst over Farage’s words. There are ‘fears’ that the ‘populist right’ will ‘whip up racist resentment’, says the Guardian. Farage’s words will ‘inflame tensions’, blubs the Independent. Every centrist twat’s favourite pod – The News Agents – accuses him of blowing a ‘careful dog whistle’, slyly goading the mob to ‘go and do your thing’.

The commentary drips with the haughtiest dread. You can smell the panic of the establishment at the prospect that the lower orders might pour on to the streets to express an unsanctioned emotion. The ‘dog whistle’ comment captures it beautifully. They view the masses as human hounds dumbly awaiting the coded orders of their demagogic masters. The emotional wasteland that is Keir Starmer, who seems incapable of either rage or joy, called Farage’s remarks ‘unforgivable’. Now is ‘a time for serious work, not rage’, he robotically spluttered.

Pick up a broadsheet or switch on the news and you’d be forgiven for thinking Farage had wielded that knife in Southampton. His ‘violent’ words are triggering the woke classes even more than the violence visited on Henry. The press is awash with handwringing over the barbarous ‘atmosphere’ his comments might conjure up, the ‘lynch mobs’ they might draw on to the streets, the innocents who might get hurt on the back of his ‘stoked anger’. The liberal elites’ fleeting grief for Henry has given way to fabulist fever dreams about the zombie masses that might swarm the streets at the behest of their monstrous controller, Farage.

And now we have Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, accusing Farage of whipping up a 1930s-style vibe. ‘[To] stoke rage… is really dangerous’, he said. ‘It’s not too dramatic to say this has echoes of the 1930s.’ Every time ordinary people push back against the state – every single time – these cowards and snobs play the 1930s card. The vote for Brexit, concerns over mass immigration, rage over the state’s denigration of a dying boy – all of it reminds them of Nazism. It is such rank elitism. That they sniff the spectre of Hitler every time Brits get angry about something says so much more about them than us. Not only do they not trust us – they even see us as brownshirts-in-waiting, easily activated by the dog whistling of some demagogue.

They have no idea of how hateful they sound. Or how hopelessly cloistered. Rage is precisely what millions felt upon viewing that bodycam footage. Fury rippled through my WhatsApp groups on Monday night when it was released. ‘Made me vomit.’ ‘FUCKING HELL.’ ‘A million times worse than I was expecting.’ What is truly inhuman is to not feel rage when reading about this boy being taunted by his killer for 10 minutes before being disbelieved, dragged and arrested as he begged for his life. It isn’t the fury of ordinary people that is scary – it’s the absence of it among our supposed betters. Instead of keeping a check on our emotions they should check themselves for a pulse.

Then there’s the hypocrisy. It is off the charts. The Guardian slams us for feeling rage over Henry, yet it published pieces in the wake of George Floyd’s death saying: ‘We need… rage.’ Cathy Newman of Sky News badgered Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf over Farage’s ‘rage’, yet back then she was delighted that ‘the fury over Floyd’s death’ had been transported ‘to all four corners of the globe’. Owen Jones condemned Farage’s ‘rage’ remarks and implied they had stirred up the idiots who threw bins at cops in Southampton on Tuesday night – yet in 2020 he gushed over the ‘righteous rage’ in response to Floyd’s death.

Rage over a man who died 4,000 miles from Britain? Go for it. Rage over a boy who died right here in England? Don’t even think about it. The reason for this brazen double standard is clear. It’s because the Brits who ‘raged’ over Floyd were primarily bourgeois leftists who obsequiously bent the knee to the ruling-class ideology of identitarianism. Meanwhile, the Brits raging over Nowak’s death include huge numbers of working-class non-Londoners who want to dismantle identitarianism, with its hyper-racialism, anti-whiteness and two-tier policing.

The establishment can handle the sight of Oxbridge keffiyeh-wearers partaking in orgies of performative virtue, whether over ‘racist America’ or ‘evil Israel’. But oiks? Gammon-coloured men draped in the England flag? Those people with their angry criticisms of the neo-racialism of the elites? Absolutely not. They must be demonised, driven from the streets. Only the righteous graduate classes are permitted to vent their moral fury in public places.

The instinct of the elites, always, is to curb populist fury. We saw it after the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017, when we were encouraged to say ‘Don’t look back in anger’ and discouraged from talking about the Islamist menace. We saw it in relation to the rape-gang scandal, when we were sternly told that any use of ‘inflammatory language’ about those mostly Muslim gangs might ‘incite mass violence’. And now we see it after the death of Henry Nowak – that familiar imperious instruction to watch what you say, police how you feel, and, above all else, don’t get angry.

Some are accusing Farage of using the Nowak horror as a weapon in the culture war. In truth, Starmer and the rest of them are using it as a shield. They’re hiding behind the spectre of lynch mobs, and the phantom of the 1930s and even the deep pain of the Nowak family in a desperate bid to avoid the criticism and dissent of ordinary people. It’s not going to work. They are too weak and the populist surge is too strong. Working-class anger won’t be tamed this time.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.