Clashes between police and protesters erupted in Southampton following the conviction of Henry Nowak's murderer on 2 June 2026. Photograph: Christopher Walls/SOPA Images/Shutterstock. What to do as murder is exploited to spread lies about race and privilege? Stand firm – fight back.
Nesrine Malik writes that it is easy to dismiss the riots as an explosion of reaction by a flammable minority. However, the uncomfortable truth is that a notion—that people of colour have been privileged over white people—is now mainstream. Whether in rejecting diversity initiatives or claims of 'two-tier policing', the moment seems about immigration, housing, or fairness, but it is broadly about one thing: equality has gone too far.
This is not a new notion, now recycled by Nigel Farage when he says there is a 'two-tier culture' where white people's rights matter less. It is backlash, similar to pushback after every civil rights progress. But while past efforts were contested in policy arenas like voting rights, now they are contested in culture—hashtagged movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Their backlashes use the same language: 'not all men', 'white lives matter'—a competing identitarian politics grounded in victimhood.
These ideas are heard in casual grumbles about jobs going to 'unqualified' ethnic minorities or children losing university places to quotas. These are sensible people who have never experienced discrimination but believe they live under systemic racism against them. This mimicry stems from both the success and failure of recent equality movements. Gains have led to cultural saturation with symbolic acts—taking the knee, removing statues—creating a sense of racial elevation. Yet minorities still face higher poverty rates and disproportionate policing. Some white people, seeing these changes as surfeit of redress, ask: what are you still going on about?
Racial justice has always been a mimetic language, a binding story. This can be coveted and copied, creating another story for those who would not swap places with minorities but crave group distinction. Victimhood becomes currency, used to galvanise protests and marches, a literal land grab from others demanding equality. This is a legacy of eroded collective gathering spaces, where material concerns could be identified and bargained for. The trade union movement is weakened, labour is precarious, deindustrialisation wrecked working-class systems, and austerity undermined free communal spaces, driving people indoors and onto phones.
All this occurs against scarcity—cost of living crises, stressed housing, healthcare, and schooling—intensifying the siege. This is not to say racism is not a factor, but its activation into violence is easier in such conditions. Correctives are hampered by governments resigned to austerity, failing to articulate a new class politics. Appealing to vague groups like 'working people' is insufficient. Filling this chasm are calls from Farage, Elon Musk, and the US vice-president, who claimed Nowak's death would not have happened if 'European elites had stood their ground against mass invasion of migrants'. Bonkers but resonant, it feeds into a sense of an overlord class that has thrown you under the bus.
Nowak's killing has been campaigned around as an opportunity to take terrain, positioning people of colour and allies as enemies drunk on wokeness, marshalling feeling towards politicians unable to govern. There is a depressing inevitability; the battle was lost long ago as liberal leaders hid from culture wars or sought to appease 'legitimate concerns' about borders. But the second best time to start fighting is now. We either accept racial victimhood as a growing feature of politics, or remake politics by standing in the winds of backlash to grapple with cynically manufactured race contests. It won't be easy, but what other choice is there?
