Harry's Last Stand
“Thirty Days in the Hole”
"I’ve never liked November because it’s neither autumn nor winter. The month feels more like a prison sentence than the passage of time — thirty days in the hole.
This is a month when daylight is rationed by the sky, like the chewing gum my father used to tear into tiny, flavourless scraps.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jmsmith/p/thirty-days-in-the-hole?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Harry's Last Stand
The Harsh Surrender Terms Austerity Demands
"It snowed in the early hours of this morning, just as it did seven years ago when Dad died. In an age of austerity, there is no time to take in that breath of memory and try to make sense of what all this living and dying means.
The cost-of-living crisis steals everything from us"
#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith #politics #fascism #austerity
Harry's Last Stand
"Seven years gone: grief has softened, but my rage at the death of his dream hasn’t
Harry Leslie Smith
February 25, 1923 – November 28, 2018**
Today seemed like the right day to cold-submit to Icon — publishers of Harry’s Last Stand and Love Among the Ruins — my dad’s now-complete Green and Pleasant Land memoir. It is, after all, the seventh anniversary of when my father began his dying in an ICU bed."
Harry's Last Stand
“Remember, it’s about quality of life now, not quantity.”
“It was a sleep that leaves you in the morning bruised and cut from dreams that were as jagged as broken glass.” Standing With Harry
"This morning, fog hung outside my window, soaking the air like a damp hood. Fog seems to have become a new phenomenon for the last days of November. My restless sleep patterns, however, are old hat."
Harry's Last Stand
When the past is unremembered, austerity is forever.
"Intro:
No one should be surprised when Rachel Reeves’ Budget, tabled tomorrow for a Starmer austerity government, makes life harder for Britain’s ordinary residents. The days we plod through are now more hopeless than hopeful. Neoliberalism is intent on economically murdering us before it commits suicide."
#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith #politics #fascism #NeoLiberalism
Harry's Last Stand
“At Least It’s Not Leukaemia” — The Rich and the Poor Die Differently
"The rich live and die differently from you or me. Capitalism without constraints ensured this. So,today’s revelations that David Cameron was successfully treated for prostate cancer left me in an emotional state of meh. During his time as Britain’s Prime Minister,his reign of austerity diminished and prematurely ended too many lives across the UK."
Harry's Last Stand
“I am going out of this World Fighting.”
In the last 10 years of Harry Leslie Smith’s life, five books were published, hundreds of essays penned, and a podcast produced. Harry made hundreds of speeches whilst he traversed tens of thousands of miles on a quest to warn us not to make his past our future.
Harry's Last Stand
Macbeth’s Damned Spot: Neoliberalism’s Murder of Hope
"Seven years ago today, my dad, ill with a fever and exhausted from age, stood from his bed and then fell to the floor, banging his head against a dresser drawer on his way down. Before he fell, he lifted his walker above his head as if he were a ship sinking into the water."
Harry's Last Stand
Starmer’s Asylum Laws Are Cynical Fascism in Action
"Four months before he died in 2018, my father, Harry Leslie Smith, made a series of videos for the UNHCR. He knew ignoring the Refugee Crisis or responding to it with indifferent cruelty would portend fascism return to power in the West.
The videos were about his memories of the refugee crisis in Europe following the defeat of Hitler’s Germany."
Harry's Last Stand
The Welfare State Built His Future. Neoliberalism Ruined Ours
"On November 28th, it will be seven years since Harry Leslie Smith died. Dying at 95 by any standard was a good run which, considering the times we live in, most of us won’t see.
Much like your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents, my dad was an ordinary man who lived through extraordinary times."
#harryslastStand #harryleslieSmith #JohnSmith #capitalism #fascism #politics
Harry's Last Stand
Neoliberalism Betrayed the Victory of WW2
"On my laptop, I found a fragment of audio of my dad recalling the final months of the Second World War. As it’s Remembrance Day, it feels right to share it. His generation went to war on the promise of a tomorrow that wouldn’t repeat the hell of their Great Depression youth. They didn’t fight for empty symbolism or the hollowed-out democracy we endure today."
Harry's Last Stand
Ten Days That Shook the World — and Why We Need Another
"By the time you read this, it will have passed. But today is the 108th anniversary of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, which created a modern communist state out of the debris of an autocratic monarchy. Ten Days That Shook the World was how American journalist John Reed described the uprising"
#harryLeslieSmith #HarrysLastStand #JohnSmith #politics #revolution #socialism #fascism #communism
Harry's Last Stand
Penny for the Guy — The 1% Put a Torch to Our Working-Class Legacy
Much of our working-class history has been erased by neoliberalism. It was done to make ordinary people more compliant with the everyday exploitation of the 1%. It’s why the compassionate socialism of Harry Leslie Smith, found in his life’s story and that of his generation, must be preserved.
Harry's Last Stand
Frozen in Fascism’s Headlights
When the West refused to make refugees welcome, its march to authoritarianism was only a matter of time.
"Outside, the rain falls cold onto the hard ground, just as it did ten years ago in Calais. My dad was alive then, and we were in France because, at 92, he made his last stand to remind people that refugees deserve welcome, not contempt."
#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith #fascism #refugees
Harry's Last Stand
"Never Again", Remembrance Day’s Broken Vow.
"The Poppy and the Politics of Forgetting
In the dying days of neoliberalism, jingoism has become the national mood. And in the first week of November, when poppy mania bursts into bloom, that nativist hysteria grows even more insufferable. My dad, a veteran of the Second World War, could never abide the treacly patriotism of Remembrance Day."
As long as there is sentience and an ability to love and show love, there is purpose to existence.
-- Harry Leslie Smith
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #HarryLeslieSmith #Existence #Love #Sentience
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Panopainting #Seashells #Everglades #Florida
Harry's Last Stand
The Social Media Tumbrils Roll for Citizen Andrew Windsor
"Like all months, recently, October finishes with vague apprehension. I’m never sure whether I can make my rent. It’s never much, but when you don’t have it, the sum needed may as well be a fortune. So, I become emotionally carbonated by anxiety."
#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith #politics #privilege #fascism
Harry's Last Stand
Like Parched Land Thirsting for Rain: America and the West’s Hunger for Democratic Revolution
"After almost four months of drought, the rains came during the night and won’t let up until tomorrow. There will be flooding because the ground is hard. My window is open, and I can hear the white noise of car wheels on the nearby rain-slicked roads. It feels cleansing after months of parched silence."
Harry's Last Stand
2025 Was The Beginning of Capitalism’s Second Great Depression
"As always, the light wanes at October’s end. Nightfall air now feels sharpened by the quickening darkness, making it abrasive against exposed skin.
The days will grow even shorter and bleaker in November. In the before times, the seasons of dark didn’t seem as oppressive. Now, it’s all so different"
#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith #politics #economy #fascism
Harry's Last Stand
The Carcass of the Welfare State Lies on the Shoulder of History’s Highway
From the struggles of the Greatest Generation, the modern Welfare State was born — only to be destroyed by neoliberalism over the last three decades. It’s as good as dead in 2025. Roadkill left on the shoulder of history’s highway picked apart by carrion.
#HarrysLastStand #HarryLeslieSmith #JohnSmith #fascism #poverty
