In the summer of 2020, the world fixated on a single phrase: “I can’t breathe.” George Floyd, pinned beneath a Minneapolis police officer’s knee for nine minutes and 29 seconds, uttered those words repeatedly as life drained from him. The video was visceral, the outrage instantaneous and global. Fast-forward to the early hours of 3rd December 2025 in Portswood, Southampton. Another young man lay in the street, bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds – including a deep puncture to the chest and slashes to the back of his legs as he tried to flee. “I’ve been stabbed,” he gasped. “I can’t breathe.” His name was Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old undergraduate at the University of Southampton, out celebrating the end of his first term with friends. The body-cam footage has still not been released. This contrast in institutional curiosity could hardly be starker.
The parallels are eerie. Both deaths involve claims of respiratory distress in the final moments. Both featured disputed police actions, in Henry’s case alleged inaction and misplaced priorities. The two men, however, could not be more disparate. Floyd was a career criminal, with a lengthy rap sheet – most notoriously an armed robbery, in which he held a gun to a pregnant woman’s stomach. Nowak meanwhile, was well-liked with no criminal record. On the night in question, he was below the drink-drive limit and may simply have found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. A charity football match held in his memory has already raised over £40,000, a quiet testament to the affection he inspired among those who knew him.
Nowak’s real offence, it seems, was being a white man in a cultural climate that increasingly treats his demographic as suspect. Had the roles been reversed, a non-white student stabbed while police indulged a white suspect’s racism claim, we would have wall-to-wall special reports, inquiries, marches, and no end of hand-wringing editorials from the likes of The Guardian.
Nonetheless, for Floyd the sainthood machine sprang into overdrive. Derek Chauvin was convicted at pace (six weeks from start to verdict). Cities across America erupted in protest, many descending into riots that caused billions of dollars in damage. Statues were toppled. “Defund the police” became the slogan of choice for every Democrat safely ensconced behind private security. Multinationals emptied their coffers into Black Lives Matter initiatives and racial justice causes, which seem to have achieved little measurable good except the opportunity to lecture their white employees. In Britain, senior politicians, police officers and footballers “took the knee”, as though they were auditioning for Game of Thrones. The narrative was simple: white cop, black victim = irredeemable systemic racism. George Floyd wasn’t just mourned, he was canonised as the patron saint of a lucrative new grievance industry.
And for Henry Nowak? Well, it’s early days but the omens are not good. There is near-total silence from the usual outlets. Our friends at The Guardian for instance, while publishing close to a thousand pieces on Floyd, have yet to publish a single article on Nowak. There have been no mass vigils, no wall-to-wall broadcast coverage, no FTSE 100 executives pausing operations, no celebrities flooding social media with white squares or solemn tributes. The exceptions prove the rule: Robert Jenrick had the decency to raise the case in Parliament, demanding answers about policing priorities. Elon Musk publicly highlighted the injustice, and offered to fund a legal challenge against the police on behalf of the Nowak family. A handful of independent journalists have noted the bitter irony. Otherwise, the establishment have thus far looked the other way.
The disparity does not lie in the raw tragedy of the deaths. Every needless death deserves proper scrutiny of policing failures, even for scumbags like Floyd. The distinction between Nowak and Floyd lies in the narrative value. For many on the Left, Floyd’s death was ideological gold: reinforcing the oppressor-victim template that dominates our discourse. Many grifters will dine out on Floyd’s death in perpetuity, no matter how well they are aware their arguments do not hold water. Nowak’s death flips the script: a promising young white man, allegedly left bleeding to death because his minority assailant cried “racism”. For many, his whiteness renders his suffering not just less newsworthy, but inconvenient to boot.
If we can answer why one death earns instant beatification while another fades into obscurity, we get a fair way down the road of understanding why the country feels broken. Britain has increasingly embraced the commercialisation of victimhood, or ‘woke’ as the vernacular has it. The Left realised decades ago that by infantilising and victimising minorities, it could then milk them endlessly for votes, money, status or attention, according to the cause in hand. To that end, whiteness is not only an enemy, but little more than original sin.
Anti-whiteness now provides a convenient fall guy for every failing: minorities underperforming? Blame whitey. Minorities overrepresented in the crime statistics? Blame whitey. Too many blacks or Muslims in jail? Blame whitey?
Floyd’s death sustains the comforting lies: police brutality, equality, multicultural success, white privilege. Nowak’s death highlights a harsher reality: Britain is becoming an increasingly dangerous place for whites in their own homeland.
It’s no coincidence therefore, that schools continue to push anti-white propaganda, that disingenuous Netflix series like Adolescence clean up at award ceremonies, and that charlatans like Sadiq Khan only campaign against misogyny or knife crime when they can cast whitey as the villain.
Henry Nowak’s name deserves to be remembered. Not as a political football, but as a young man who paid the ultimate price for the cowardice of those that govern. Until the authorities reject this sham hierarchy of victimhood and merely enforce the law without fear or favour, more innocents will pay the price.
Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West and The Frank Report Substack.
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