Vice President JD Vance has spoken out against “the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants” in the United Kingdom after the brutal death of student Henry Nowak, the second U.S. intervention on “civilisational decline” in Britain in 24 hours.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer attempted to kick back against the President Donald Trump Administration and American concern for the country’s descent into chaos on Friday night, characterising comments from Washington as political interference and even an attempt to “stir up division on our streets”. U.S. Vice President JD Vance made one of the present Trump Administration’s most strident interventions on the general direction of British society of this presidency yet, expressing the only and proper response to the death of student Henry Nowak — who bled to death after being stabbed but was handcuffed by police as he died because his killer filed a false racism report — is “righteous anger”.
Picking up on the theme of civilisational decline expressed by the U.S. State Department the previous evening, Vice President Vance wrote of events in the United Kingdom:
Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.
Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life, and I fear he won’t be the last. Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger… nobody—nobody—should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died. May God comfort those who loved him, and may God rest his soul.
VP Vance reminded that routing these problems is actually technically feasible but requires political will. The U.S. government under President Trump has proved “stopping the flow of mass migration and defending national sovereignty” can be done, and that “Anything else is an excuse”.
Laying out the very fundamentals, Vance said: “It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children.”
These remarks followed others on Thursday night from the U.S. Department of State, as concern about the death of Henry Nowak and the deep failings of the state and nation it underlined grew too great to pass unremarked. As reported, a statement identified “ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing” as “glaring symptoms of civilizational decline” in the United Kingdom. These developments should be “rejected across the West”, it said.
Those remarks triggered some outrage in the British political sphere, given that establishment sentiment remains very much in favour of what is called multiculturalism. Downing Street clung to the official position that two-tier policing simply doesn’t exist, while the Liberal Democrat Party pushed the government to go further and called for the American ambassador to be summoned for a dressing down.
The latest intervention by Vice President Vance prompted another round of discomfort in Westminster, with the Prime Minister’s spokesman outright accusing the U.S. of trying to interfere in Britain’s democracy. They said, The Sun reports: “In recent days we have seen people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets”.
The leader of the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrat party, Ed Davey, also feigned outrage, saying: “We all need to resist attempts like this to politicise Henry Nowak’s death and divide our country – whether they come from MAGA politicians like Vance or their cronies here in the UK.”
However, many noted that British politicians seemingly have shown no hesitancy in interjecting during similar cases in the United States, including in the wake of the death of George Floyd in 2020, following which then Labour Party leader Starmer infamously took a picture of himself “taking the knee” in Westminster in a show of open support for the Marxist Black Lives Matter Movement.
Commenting on the apparent double standard, Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers said: “Very fortunately, protesters mourning Nowak have not ignited infrastructure, murdered anyone, or otherwise cut an antisocial swathe of destruction through the UK. To the extent any of them care what America thinks, we urge them to remain peaceful—and we expect they will. Just like Henry Nowak and just like Americans, ordinary Brits have been slandered as racist. Thus violent. They’re not.”