The Stop Fascism Action Network ( SFAN ) has been created to provide an open space for discussion, sharing of ideas and information, and connecting with one another to spark meaningful, effective action to protect democracy, human rights and freedom, and to stop the madness of corporate fascism which is emerging with frightening speed across the planet. It is time to stand. Please join us, and welcome. The space is brand new, and it is a Network that is still in the process of being built. You are welcome and encouraged to join in the creation.

The aim of the SFAN is to hold a space where serious engagement with the issues surrounding democracy, freedom, human rights, and their threats from corporate fascism, can be addressed. It is hoped that this will also be a space for the bringing of light, a place of inspiration, hope and determination, a place of empowerment, and a place where humor is not a bad word. The issues are serious, and require from us an earnest and dedicated response, but we must make room also for lightness, humor, friendship and joy, or we will die of a dryness of the soul, and nothing worthwhile will be accomplished. As a very great and noble woman once said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” For the SFAN to be most creative, empowering and inspiring of constructive action, it must be an open space, and a place of sharing, dialog and mutual respect. Ideological “correctness” is not required - in fact, rigid clinging to ideologies would hinder rather than help the discussion.
The challenge of our time, the threat to democracy, peace and justice, will take a strong united coalition built from the grassroots in order to be successfully met. It will require of us the ability to transcend our differences, and to find common ground and common purpose, despite our diversity - and in fact, our union will be stronger for our diversity. We need not agree on everything. We need only to agree on enough that we can work together to protect and to deepen democracy, freedom and human rights, and to defend these common values from their greatest threat today: the emergence of global corporate fascism. The challenge that confronts us transcends notions of right and left. It requires of us that we build bridges where none may have seemed possible. We need to get together on the basics - liberty, democracy, and our most fundamental of human rights. If we do not come together on the basics, we will lose these basic things we thought enshrined forever.

If we come together as Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, Liberals, Conservatives, Progressives and Radicals we can defeat these threats to human rights, freedom and democracy. All that is essential to our union is that we agree on two things: democracy is preferable to fascism, and democracy is now under attack. If we can recognize this most basic common ground, then we can form a union, a grassroots coalition, that is united across its great diversity on this one goal: the defense of democracy. If we can come together across the various lines of ideology, race, class, gender, geography, culture and religion, forming a united force rooted in this one shared value, and this one goal - to protect liberty, democracy and fundamental human rights - we can create the broadest, most powerful citizen’s movement the world has seen. This is precisely what we need to do.

United We Stand - Divide we Fall

Written by J. Todd Ring ( Reprinted with his permission )

http://jtoddring.wordpress.com/

Sincerely,

Robert R. ( SFAN Founder )

Definition of Fascism -
1 - an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government.
Source - The Compact Oxford English Dictionary

Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, described fascism in his 1942 "Message from the President of the United States Transmitting Recommendations Relative to the Strengthening and Enforcement of Anti-trust Laws" as follows:

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

"The structure of fascism is the union, marriage, merger or fusion of corporate economic power with governmental power." - David G. Mills.

It's the Corporate State, Stupid!

By David G. Mills

11/10/04 "ICH" -- The early twentieth century Italians, who invented the word fascism, also had a more descriptive term for the concept -- estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Unfortunately for Americans, we have come to equate fascism with its symptoms, not with its structure. The structure of fascism is corporatism, or the corporate state. The structure of fascism is the union, marriage, merger or fusion of corporate economic power with governmental power. Failing to understand fascism, as the consolidation of corporate economic and governmental power in the hands of a few, is to completely misunderstand what fascism is. It is the consolidation of this power that produces the demagogues and regimes we understand as fascist ones. (Read More)