Bodycam footage of Henry Nowak’s final moments has shaken the nation. Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, argues that the world is realising the damage caused by cultural Marxism.
For decades, cultural Marxism has run rampant through our institutions.
This week, the world watched an officer dragging Henry Nowak across the floor as he died. The police officer, in the moment, failed to take seriously Henry’s claim to have been stabbed. He was needlessly handcuffed. His murderer stood over him, complaining of a swollen eye. He died on the floor.
It was the moment that the world woke up to the danger of cultural Marxism.
In significant moments like this, the story often becomes larger than the facts themselves. None of us can fully know the thoughts or motivations of every person involved.
But we know that in the 999 call and when the officers arrived, Vickrum Digwa weaponised claims of racism against his victim. And we know that for decades, concerns about political correctness have prevented police officers and other officials from doing the right thing, with devastating effects.
It would take saint-like levels of faith for someone to believe that the claims of racism had no negative effect on the officers’ response at the scene.
This week, many have finally lost their faith in the grandmaster of cultural Marxism, Gramsci.
A pyramid of oppression and the hierarchy of rights
I have long lamented the way in which white men in our nation have been portrayed endlessly as the oppressor. Anyone who falls outside this ‘dominant’ group is assumed to be a victim of that oppression in some way.
The same is true of other characteristics: if you are Christian, heterosexual, or ‘cisgender’, you are often presumed to stand at the top of a cultural pyramid, benefiting from and perpetuating the disadvantage of those deemed to be below you.
The great success of cultural Marxism has been to march through the institutions, embedding attitudes and policies that invert this so-called pyramid of oppression, intentionally creating biases to correct what is seen as inequity. Intersectionality meant that disparate groups like Muslims and LGBTQ+ saw a common oppressor in Christians and could ally against them.
That’s why, when the Equality Act laid out protected characteristics like religion or belief, sexual orientation, and gender reassignment, it was never going to achieve real equality. There would be a clash between protected characteristics and a hierarchy of rights would develop.
In the work of the Christian Legal Centre, I have seen this play out in countless different ways.
Islam
Many of the most serious harms have come through fears of political correctness around Islam.
Decades of grooming gang abuses were allowed to continue because police and other authorities were concerned about accusations of racism and Islamophobia. The victims include ‘Sarah’, whom I have personally supported. She is among several survivors who have shared the specifically Islamic nature of some of the abuse. It has been a long uphill battle to get the authorities to even consider that these have anything to do with Islam, as our recent report demonstrates.
A security guard at the Manchester Arena attack failed to intervene for fear of being branded a racist.
In the wake of that and other Islamist attacks, Ian Sleeper held a sign saying “Love Muslims, hate Islam, Jesus is love and hope.” He was arrested.
The evangelist Hatun Tash is well known for having been stabbed at Speakers’ Corner and facing multiple plots to kill her because of her outreach to Muslims. Yet it is she who has been arrested numerous times, not the mobs surrounding her. She was arrested for damaging her own Quran. She was arrested falsely in 2021 minutes after those who incited her arrest were recorded calling for Jewish blood.
Even in situations where Muslims are the majority, as they surround the diminutive Hatun, they are afforded minority status and protected against the Christian.
And the Labour Government pushed hard for an Islamophobia definition (now ‘anti-Muslim hostility’) which will only make things worse. It provides even more reasons why people will be afraid to trust their eyes and address the real problems in front of them.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council has recently updated its misconduct guide to implement this anti-Muslim hatred definition. And speaking of nurses…
Trans identities – afforded the highest protection?
As I have supported nurses like Jennifer Melle and the Darlington Nurses through lengthy legal battles, it has been plain to see trans-identifying people being treated as automatic victims, no matter what the facts are.
Multiple women raised concerns about the inappropriate behaviour of ‘Rose’, a man who stood in a female changing room in his boxer shorts with holes in them and triggered traumatic flashbacks for female nurse Karen Danson. Even though the nurses won their case, the treatment of these women throughout the situation is in stark contrast to the support and respect consistently given to ‘Rose’.
Even more stark was the differing treatment given to Jennifer Melle when she accurately described a male, convicted paedophile prisoner as ‘mister’, leading to her being racially abused using the N word. She was suspended and offered no support because his status as trans gave him automatic victim status, with Jennifer cast as oppressor.
Cultural Marxism blinds us
Everywhere I look in our cases and campaigns, this thinking turns up. Felix Ngole’s Christian views about marriage and sex were argued to be harmful due to minority stress theory. The “smash heteronormativity” chants used in staff training that chaplain Bernard Randall objected to cost him his job.
I could continue to outline the countless ways that these clashes play out between differing groups. The ubiquitous ideology of cultural Marxism has blinded us and led to worse inequalities.
So it would be absolutely no surprise for it to have blinded the police officers attending the murder of Henry Nowak.
Everything about our cultural narratives screams that it’s likely that a white lad, perhaps after a night out, would racially abuse and attack a minority. This is what Vickrum Digwa exploited. This is what made Henry Nowak’s claim of having been stabbed so unbelievable to the police officer arriving at the scene.
Reverse the identities of those involved and this is plain to see. Imagine a group of white men standing around a minority who is on the floor saying he’s been stabbed. Does anyone truly believe the treatment would have been identical?
God demands that we show no partiality. There is one law for both native and stranger. We must abandon systems of thinking that insist on privileging some groups over others, not because of “the content of their character” but because they belong to a group that is afforded automatic victim status.
The ideology of cultural Marxism has twisted Christian virtues of impartiality and justice into a harmful parody of those values.
The world is becoming ready for the real thing – we need to be ready to give it to them.
It’s found in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom all things hold together. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus makes sense of everything. In him, truth, justice and freedom are found.