The Wrong Dead Boy

I was scrolling through my timeline last night and I saw a TikTok video come into my X feed. It was a cute video of a boy and his sister dancing... It was really fun. You could feel the love in the room. They were just having a good time together and you could tell they just thought the world of each other through their body language.

It reminded me of me and my sister.

Growing up, she was the performer... into theater and dancing, always putting on a show for everyone. And me? I was the supportive brother. The supporting character. I still do it with my niece now. She's a dancer, always trying to show me her moves and pull me into her routines... we've made a bunch of silly videos just like the ones that came into my feed.

As I was thinking about this, I was scrolling the replies and I found out the boy in the video was dead. Murdered.

His name was Henry Nowak. Eighteen years old. He was stabbed to death last December, and the footage of his final moments had just been released, which is why he was suddenly all over my feed. And that video I'd been smiling at? His sister made it to remember him by.

I couldn't stop thinking about it. I felt like I had to say something.

And as I sat down to write, it hit me that I wasn't the first person a death like this ever moved to pick up a pen. Years ago, one of the most respected journalists in Britain felt the very same pull.

Her name?

Cathy Newman.

For twenty years she was the face of Channel 4 News. Oxford educated, first-class honors, the kind of journalist who sits across from real men of power and doesn't blink. When Cathy Newman asks a question, the country listens.

And a few years ago, she showed us exactly what she cares about. In the spring of 2021, the world was still raw from the death of George Floyd. Cathy Newman watched millions of people pour into the streets in his name, and she saw something beautiful in it. It inspired her to write. I imagine, she felt something like what I'm feeling now... after seeing what happened to Henry...

And so, she wrote. She watched the fury over Floyd's death travel to all four corners of the globe, and she called it what she believed it was: people power. An obvious force for good. She praised the politicians who finally listened... She believed, with her whole heart, that justice was on the march. She beamed with a sense of pride that she was going to be doing her part to bring some more justice into this world.

So a few weeks ago, when it happened again, you'd expect her to feel exactly the same way. Another needless death, one the police arguably had a hand in... just like Floyd. The public pouring into the streets in his name. The same kind of fury, over a similar type of tragedy. Politicians standing up to give a voice to that fury... Everything she had celebrated in 2021 was happening again, right in front of her.

But this time, Cathy Newman didn't see "people power". This time, she saw a threat... a predator that had to be put down.

A couple nights ago she had on a man who dared to give that fury a voice. His name is Zia Yusuf. Instead of celebrating him, the way she'd celebrated the politicians of 2021... she went after him... trying to use him as a proxy to go after Nigel Farage and everyone who supports his 'Reform UK' party.

Her weapon was a single word: Incitement.

Farage had told people to feel a cold, righteous rage at what was done to Henry. And Cathy Newman wanted that called incitement. A danger. Something that should maybe even be against the law... The same fury she had blessed in 2021, the fury she'd called a force for good... she was now trying to outlaw. And look at her face when she says this... she is cold, determined... like a tiger about to sink its teeth into its prey. Chilling.

There was one thing Cathy Newman was not willing to do. Her interviewee asked her a simple question... not a political one. A human one. He asked her what she felt when she watched Henry Nowak die.

"What emotion did you feel having watched the bodycam footage?"

She wouldn't answer it. "I'm asking you whether that's incitement," she said... desperately trying to get back on the offense. Cathy isn't used to being on defense...

He asked again. > "What emotion did you feel having watched the bodycam footage?"

"I'm conducting this interview!" she said with rising anger.

He asked a third time. Her answer: "Is that incitement or not? It's simple."

Three times this man asked Cathy Newman what she felt watching an eighteen-year-old boy bleed to death in handcuffs. Three times, the woman who built a career demanding answers from powerful men refused to give one. She didn't want to talk about Henry. She wanted to talk about putting Nigel Farage in her crosshairs.

When she finally answered, she said her heart was broken for the family, that it was enraging. Okay great! Finally some humanity from Cathy... but it wasn't to last...

... then, in the same breath, she turned that grief into a weapon: "[politicians] stoking this anger... has consequences, doesn't it?" She could grieve the dead boy for exactly one sentence before she got back to the hunt.

This woman is an absolute predator... I stand in awe of it. It's like when I go to the zoo, and I see a Bengal Tiger in all its glory... its majesty. The size... the power... the strength. Every movement commands respect. You thank God there is a cage protecting you from it.

That's how I feel when I see Cathy Newman. I am in awe. That's how you should feel too. This woman is dangerous, and she is powerful.

Think for a moment about who actually holds the power here. Is it the politician she's grilling? The representative of the state? Or is it her?

Cathy decides what millions believe before breakfast. Nobody elected her. Nobody can vote her out. She struts around playing the brave journalist holding power to account... but she IS the power. This watchdog has been the Tiger the whole time.

So keep your distance... unless you know how to tame a Tiger. Fortunately, our friend Zia here is quite the Tiger Tamer...

Newman tried to go for the kill again. Another smear attack...

"We have Nigel Farage making claims that White Lives Matter, which is a slogan that was used by the UK's largest white supremacist group. Are you happy with him using that phrase?"

She chopped his sentence in half. She turned "white lives matter as much as black lives" into the bare slogan "White Lives Matter," and tied it to a hate group. That's the kill-shot.

An untrained operator would've taken the bait. Zia caught it immediately.

"With respect, Cathy, I'm correcting you on this, because to leave out the second half of the sentence I think is deliberately misrepresentative and misleading. So Nigel said that white lives matter as much as black lives, and my question to you is, do you disagree with that statement?"

And that's it... she was completely disarmed. The rest of the interview is her scrambling to deflect, trying to make it about what she calls decades of "police racism against black Britons." Think about that... This is a story about a young white British boy being murdered by a Sikh man. And her concern is racism against black people... In what world is that even coherent?

She's flailing. Zia doesn't let her off the hook.

"I'm kind of stunned that you couldn't bring yourself to say that you agree."

But our tiger tamer had one move left... and it was the one she never saw coming, because the weapon was her own. He reminded her of what she'd written, back in the spring of 2021, when the world was grieving George Floyd.

He read her own words back to her. That the fury over Floyd's death had traveled "to all four corners of the globe." That it was "people power". A force for good.

You've heard those words before. I read them to you a few minutes ago... when I told you how much she cared.

So, look at what's the same. A man, dead. The public pouring into the streets in his name. Police responsibility... The same fury, traveling the same way. A politician standing up to give it a voice.

In 2021, she called that justice on the march.

In 2026, she called it incitement.

Everything was the same. Everything... except one thing.

Henry was white.

So what's the lesson I want you to walk away with here?

Here it is:

Cathy Newman is not an exception. She is the archetype of the ideal Regime Journalist. This is what they all aspire to be.

You don't have to take my word for it. Look at what the rest of them ran while Henry's body was still warm.

CBC: "How Britain's far right hijacked the murder of Henry Nowak."

CNN: "Handcuffed student's death sparks uproar in UK, as far right accused of inflaming tensions."

The Guardian: "Europe's far right exploit Henry Nowak murder in UK with populist rhetoric on race."

Three media giants. Three different countries. One script.

Do you see the game? Do you see what Cathy Newman really is?

She's a node on a network. One of a thousand of them, all wired into the same machine, all running the same program. No memo required. You don't tell a node what to do... It already knows...

You can see what she's doing, because you already know this story. You saw it. You watched that bodycam with your own eyes... you saw the boy in handcuffs... you heard his voice whimper as he begged for help with his last words... You didn't need Cathy Newman to tell you what happened.

But you watched her try to tell you what to think about it anyway. You watched her lie to an entire nation.

You caught her in the act. That word, "far-right," is the whole trick. That's the leash they try to put around your neck.

They don't have to censor you or arrest you. They just have to make caring about the wrong dead boy socially radioactive. They make it so that if you say Henry's name with any feeling in your voice, your neighbor flinches. And so, slowly, you learn to keep your mouth shut. You put the leash on yourself.

That's the game. They get to decide which deaths you're allowed to grieve... and when you grieve the wrong one? Well, they just give you a little tug on that leash "far-right!" to get you back in line.

I'll tell you who these people... these... journalists... never spared a thought for. Not once. Henry Nowak... or George Floyd for that matter.

They cared about the narrative above all else. These are power players. Predators. They cared about the politicians they want to bury. They cared about using these bodies to further whatever agenda they were pushing that day.

The one person nobody in that whole machine ever actually grieved was the eighteen-year-old boy who bled to death in handcuffs on a British street, asking for help, while a stranger told him he wasn't really stabbed.

She tried to tell everyone that YOU are the predator for being angry about this... but that is exactly backwards. SHE is the predator. A tiger with no cage. And you, the one taught to feel ashamed of your own heart, taught to flinch at the sound of 'far-right', taught to fasten the leash yourself... she was training you to be her prey.

But training only works on an animal that can't see the cage. And now you see it... and you can't unsee it. So take the leash off. Say his name out loud. Grieve that boy without apology, and never again let them make you ashamed of the one thing that still makes you human.

Stop being prey.