Failing to humanely end the refugee crisis spells the end for caring democratic societies-all roads lead to authoritarianism now.

There is no wind in the willow's sentiment to this August. Each day has been pitiless with news of some fresh atrocity or disaster unleashed by our self-created climate crisis.

It's summer, and so we pretend the fucked up world we inhabit was always thus. But it wasn't -at least not in the West during the golden age of the Welfare State in the 1960s and early 1970s. That's not to say things weren't fucked up then because racism, homophobia, sexism and the divisions over the war in Vietnam were rampant. But there was a feeling that the times were evolving to something better.

Not anymore; all that tail-end boomers like me took for granted as things from our parents' past but not our future are back. Hunger, homelessness, right-wing populist politics, and a refugee crisis run amok because of unjust wars and Western exploitation are again in vogue.

In Toronto, New York, and hundreds of other cities across the Western world, many refugees must kip on the pavement because there is no temporary accommodation for them. Refugees, in 2023, are stateless, homeless and hopeless thanks to neoliberalism. Outside of refugees from the war in Ukraine, the West has closed its ears to the cries of the forsaken. Refugees are brutalised- in inhumane camps our governments fund on the fringes of Europe and America to keep "migrants" from entering our nations. They drown on the high seas in their multitudes looking to find a haven with us. But we view their deaths with less concern than road kill, on the shoulders of our highways. There are just too many crisis from cost of living to housing preying upon the minds of the ordinary citizens who have been conditioned to blame not the rich for their poverty but those who are worst off then themselves.

Three wars that Britain enabled, promoted, fought and lost; Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, created the worst refugee crisis humanity has seen since the Second World War. The wars were immoral, illegal, unnecessary and deadly.

But Britain has never stood its round when it comes to settling the bill for their imperialism. They shirk the cost and shift the conversation towards their finest hour, which died over 80 years ago when they stood alone against fascism.

But Britain, after 13 years of austerity, Brexit and a steady diet of fascism from Murdoch's news media empire, has more in common with the first days of Nazi Germany than they will ever dare to admit.

A decent, caring society would not retrofit barges to turn them into floating concentration camps for refugees. In 2019, kindness in Britain did a runner when the news media and the entitle convinced the people that Boris Johnson was the prime minister Britain needed rather than Jeremy Corbyn. Ever since then, the car crash towards an intolerant, authoritarian state was inevitable and no change in government from one variant of neo liberalism to another will alter the darkness descending.

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A government that would force refugees to live on a barge that the fire service has called a floating Grenfell Tower is, by definition, evil. This is not incompetence or a government concerned by the burgeoning cost of the refugee crisis on the taxpayer, but wilful malevolence. What makes it even more terrifying is that the Labour Party under Starmer is more or less in agreement with the conservative party's antirefugee policies. The difference Labour has with the Tories about refugees is about the inefficiency in their ability to stop them from arriving in Britain.

We live in a miserable era that takes too many of its cues from social Darwinism ensuring the supremacy of the 1% and our premature deaths.

The more we ignore the refugee crisis, the more we dehumanise refugees; the closer we come to the end of society, democracy and a civilisation worth preserving.

Months before he died, my dad Harry Leslie Smith made a video for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. It was his testament to what he saw as a young man during and after the Second World War. It was a reminder that his generation- unlike ours chose compassion rather than xenophobia when the guns of war grew silent. I guess that's what happens when you fight a just war; you get a just peace.

I urge you to watch his attached video. It's a few minutes long. But it tells us how much, as a society we lost our way and how our journey across existence- must be done with an empathetic heart.

As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts because I really need your help this month. August is a bad month with prescriptions that need to be filled and treatments and tests that occur in cities that I must commute to. . Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John

Watch the video here.