In an English port city late last year, Vickrum Digwa stabbed and killed Henry Nowak, and by any fair measure, it was a brutal crime. Digwa was arrested, charged, convicted of murder and, as of last week, sentenced to life in prison.
Complicating matters, however, was the initial police response. When officers first arrived, the murderer falsely claimed to be a victim of a hate crime, and a video of what transpired showed the police temporarily putting the actual victim in handcuffs for about a minute. Officers then realized that Nowak had been stabbed and began administering first aid, but given the severity of the attack, he did not survive.
Because the attacker was Sikh and the victim was white, prominent British voices eager to stir racist animus have seized on the crime. As of late last week, JD Vance decided to weigh in, too.
In a three-paragraph statement posted to social media, the Republican vice president described the murder as “enraging” and blamed “European elites” for failing to stand against “the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.”
The Ohio Republican went on to write, “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. And nobody — nobody — should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died.”
Vance, whose wife is a Hindu Indian American, neglected to elaborate as to who counts as “we.”
What’s more, the American vice president also neglected to mention the inconvenient fact that the convicted murderer isn’t an immigrant: He’s British-born and -raised.