Synarchism generally means "joint rule" or "harmonious rule". Beyond this general definition, both synarchism and synarchy have been used to denote rule by a secret elite in Vichy France, Italy, China, and Hong Kong, while being used to describe a pro-Catholic theocracy movement in Mexico. [1]
The earliest recorded use of the term synarchy is attributed to Thomas Stackhouse (1677–1752), an English clergyman who used the word in his New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the Establishment of Christianity (published in two folio volumes in 1737). The attribution can be found in the Webster's Dictionary (the American Dictionary of the English Language, published by Noah Webster in 1828). Webster's definition for synarchy is limited entirely to "joint rule or sovereignty". The word is derived from the Greek stems syn meaning "with" or "together" and archy meaning "rule". [2]
The most substantial early use of the word synarchy comes from the writings of Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842–1909), who used the term in his book La France vraie to describe what he believed was the ideal form of government. [3] In reaction to the emergence of anarchist ideologies and movements, Saint-Yves elaborated a political formula which he believed would lead to a harmonious society. He defended social differentiation and hierarchy with collaboration between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups: synarchy, as opposed to anarchy. Specifically, Saint-Yves envisioned a Federal Europe (as well as all the states it has integrated) with a corporatist government composed of three councils, one for academia, one for the judiciary, and one for commerce. [4]
The word synarchy is used, especially among French and Spanish speakers, to describe a shadow government or deep state, a form of government where political power effectively rests with a secret elite, in contrast to an oligarchy where the elite is or could be known by the public. [5]
The Pacte Synarchique is a historical theory that the surrender of Vichy France was as a result of a conspiracy by French industrial and banking interests to surrender France to Hitler in order to fight Communism. The original Pacte was supposedly discovered after the death in 1941 of Jean Coutrot, former member of Groupe X-Crise. According to this document, a Mouvement Synarchique d'Empire had been founded in 1922 with the aim of abolishing parliamentarianism and replacing it with synarchy. A Vichy investigation [6] found no evidence for the Mouvement Synarchiste d'Empire existence. Most of the presumed synarchists were either associated with the Banque Worms or with Groupe X-Crise and were close to Admiral François Darlan the Vichy prime minister (1941–1942). Most historians agree that the Pacte was a hoax created by some French collaborators with Nazi Germany to weaken Darlan and his Vichy technocrats. [7]
Lyndon LaRouche, leader of the LaRouche movement, described a wide-ranging historical phenomenon, starting with Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre and the Martinist Order followed by important individuals, organizations, movements and regimes that are alleged to have been synarchist, including the government of Nazi Germany. [8] He claimed that during the Great Depression an international coalition of financial institutions, raw materials cartels, and intelligence operatives installed fascist regimes throughout Europe (and tried to do so in Mexico) to maintain world order and prevent the repudiation of international debts. [9] LaRouche identified the former U.S. vice president and former PNAC member Dick Cheney as a modern "synarchist", and claimed that "synarchists" have "a scheme for replacing regular military forces of nations, by private armies in the footsteps of a privately financed international Waffen-SS like scheme, a force deployed by leading financier institutions, such as the multi-billions funding by the U.S. Treasury, of Cheney's Halliburton gang." [10]
Harvard historian and sinologist John K. Fairbank used the word synarchy in his 1953 book Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842–1854, and in later writings, to describe the mechanisms of government under the Qing dynasty in China. Fairbank's synarchy is a form of joint rule by co-opting existing Manchu and Han Chinese elites and bringing the foreign powers into the system and legitimizing them through a schedule of rituals and tributes that gave them a stake in the Qing dynasty rule. He believed that the Qing, who were considered outside rulers because of their Manchu origins, developed this strategy out of necessity because they did not have a strong political base in China. [11] [12] [13]
The term is also used by some political scientists to describe the British colonial government in Hong Kong (1842–1997). Ambrose King, in his 1975 paper Administrative Absorption of Politics in Hong Kong, described colonial Hong Kong's administration as "elite consensual government". In it, he claimed, any coalition of elites or forces capable of challenging the legitimacy of Hong Kong's administrative structure would be co-opted by the existing apparatus through the appointment of leading political activists, business figures and other elites to oversight committees, by granting them British honours, and by bringing them into elite institutions like Hong Kong's horse racing clubs. He called this synarchy, by extension of Fairbank's use of the word.
Synarchy is also the name of the ideology of a political movement in Mexico dating from the 1930s. In Mexico, it was historically a movement of the Roman Catholic extreme right, in some ways akin to fascism, violently opposed to the populist and secularist policies of the revolutionary (PNR, PRM, and PRI) governments that ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000. [14]
The National Synarchist Union (Unión Nacional Sinarquista, UNS) was founded in May 1937 by a group of Catholic political activists led by José Antonio Urquiza, who was murdered in April 1938, and Salvador Abascal. In 1946, a faction of the movement loyal to deposed leader Manuel Torres Bueno regrouped as the Popular Force Party (Partido Fuerza Popular). Synarchism revived as a political movement in the 1970s through the Mexican Democratic Party (PDM), [15] whose candidate, Ignacio González Gollaz, polled 1.8 percent of the vote at the 1982 presidential election. In 1988 Gumersindo Magaña polled a similar proportion, but the party then suffered a split, and, in 1992, lost its registration as a political party. It was dissolved in 1996.
There are now two organisations, both calling themselves the Unión Nacional Sinarquista, one aligning to Francoist policies, [16] the other following the National Syndicalism of Primo De Rivera.[ according to whom? ] Carlos Abascal, son of Salvador Abascal, was Mexico's Secretary of the Interior during Vicente Fox's presidency. Many sinarquistas are now militant in the National Action Party, PAN, of former presidents Vicente Fox (2000–2006) and Felipe Calderón (2006–2012).
Education in Hong Kong used to be largely modelled on that of the United Kingdom, particularly the English system. Since 2012, the overhaul of secondary school diploma has introduced changes to the number of school years as well as the two-tier general examinations. The DSE has replaced the old HKCEE and the A-levels. Education policy in Hong Kong is overseen by the Education Bureau and the Social Welfare Department.
In sociology and in political science, the term The Establishment describes the dominant social group, the elite who control a polity, an organization, or an institution. In the praxis of wealth and power, the Establishment usually is a self-selecting, closed elite entrenched within specific institutions — hence, a relatively small social class can exercise all socio-political control.
Shina is a largely archaic name for China. The word was originally used in Japanese and had a neutral connotation, but came to be perceived as derogatory by Chinese people during the course of the First and Second Sino-Japanese Wars. As a result, it fell into disuse following World War II and is now viewed as offensive, with the standard Japanese name for China being replaced by 中国.
Hong Kong (1800s–1930s) oversaw the founding of the new crown colony of Hong Kong under the British Empire. After the First Opium War, the territory was ceded by the Qing Empire to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland through Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and Convention of Peking (1860) in perpetuity. Together with additional land that was leased to the British under the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory (1898), Hong Kong became one of the first parts of East Asia to undergo industrialisation.
Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves, Marquis d’Alveydre was a French occultist who adapted the works of Fabre d'Olivet (1767–1825) and, in turn, had his ideas adapted by Gérard Encausse alias Papus. His work on "L'Archéomètre" deeply influenced the young René Guénon. He developed the term Synarchy—the association of everyone with everyone else—into a political philosophy, and his ideas about this type of government proved influential in politics and the occult.
Long before World War II, the various Breton nationalist organizations were often anti-French and anti-colonialist, opposed to the Central Government's policy of linguistic imperialism, and critical to varying degrees of post-French Revolution-style Republicanism. Some Breton nationalists were openly pro-fascist. The extent to which this led Breton nationalists into collaboration with the Axis Powers and their motivations, remains a matter of often bitter historical controversy and debate.
The Groupe X-Crise was a French technocratic movement created in 1931 as a consequence of the 1929 Wall Street stock market crash and the Great Depression. Formed by former students of the École Polytechnique, it advocated planisme, or economic planning, as opposed to the then dominant ideology of classical liberalism which they held to have failed. Their ideas would not be put into practice until the Vichy era, when many technocrats seized the opportunity to reconstruct France, and the disputed document Pacte Synarchique apparently named this group as the plotters to install the Vichy regime. However, many members of the group joined the Resistance and opposed the Vichy regime, ultimately participating in the post-war administration.
Salvador Abascal Infante was a Mexican politician and leading exponent of Mexican synarchism. For a time, he was the leader of the National Synarchist Union (UNS). Abascal represented the orthodox Catholic tendency within the movement.
The National Synarchist Union was a Mexican political organization. It was historically a movement of the Roman Catholic extreme right, similar to clerical fascism and Falangism, implacably opposed to the policies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its predecessors that governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000 and from 2012 to 2018. The organization was notably the only explicit right-wing movement in Mexico to garner such nation-wide support and influence during this era. At its peak in 1940, there were approximately 500,000 registered members. Mostly active in the late 1930s and early 1940s, its support for the Axis in World War II damaged its reputation. The organization experienced intense infighting in the mid-1940s which ultimately led to multiple schisms. The organization was dissolved as a political party in 1951 and largely faded into obscurity outside the city of Guanajuato, where it retained some local influence. In the 1980s, the UNS was reconstituted as the Mexican Democratic Party, which held seats in the Chamber of Deputies from 1979 to 1988, peaking at 12 Deputies in the 1982 election but losing its presence in 1988; the Mexican Democratic Party (PDM) dissolved in 1997, though two groups both claiming to be the legitimate UNS continued to exist.
Franc-Tireur was a French Resistance movement of centrist political orientation and the smallest of the three founding member-organisations of the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance in 1943.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche is a German political activist. She is the widow of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and the founder of the LaRouche movement's Schiller Institute, as well as the German Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität party (BüSo).
David Paul Goldman is an American economic strategist and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler with the first column published January 1, 2000. The pseudonym is an allusion to German historian Oswald Spengler, whose most famous work, Decline of the West (1918), asserted that Western civilization was already dying. Goldman says that he writes from a Judeo-Christian perspective and often focuses on demographic and economic factors in his analyses; he says his subject matter proceeds "from the theme formulated by [Franz] Rosenzweig: the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie, and unadaptable Islam." On March 14, 2015, Goldman and longtime Asia Times associate Uwe Von Parpart joined an investor group that took control of Asia Times HK Ltd. He became Deputy Editor (Business) at Asia Times in 2020. Goldman was global head of credit strategy at Credit Suisse 1999-2002, Global Head of Fixed Income Research for Bank of America 2002-2005, and Global Head of Fixed Income Research at Cantor Fitzgerald 2005-2008. He subsequently was a partner at Yunfeng Financial in Hong Kong, an investment bank later acquired by Jack Ma. He continues to advise CEOs and institutional investors. He is a regular contributor to Claremont Review of Books, Law and Liberty, Tablet Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and First Things.
Hong Kong was a British crown colony and later a dependent territory of the United Kingdom from 1841 to 1997, with a period of Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945 during World War II. The colonial period began with the British occupation of Hong Kong Island under the Convention of Chuenpi in 1841 of the Victorian era.
A triad is a Chinese transnational organized crime syndicate based in Greater China with outposts in various countries having significant overseas Chinese populations.
Liberalism in Hong Kong has become the driving force of the democratic movement since the 1980s which is mainly represented by the pro-democracy camp which strives for the universal suffrage, human rights and rule of law in Hong Kong. It is one of two major political ideologies of the Hong Kong, with the other being conservatism. The emergence of the contemporary liberalism took root in the rapid democratisation in the final years of the colonial years in the 1980s and 1990s, which the pro-democracy camp was united under the banner of an autonomous Hong Kong under Chinese sovereignty. The liberals consolidated their popular support from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and received landslide victories in the first direct elections in 1991 and 1995 in the final colonial years. The liberals took the defensive role against the Beijing's authoritarian regime going into the early SAR period which led to the massive demonstration against the Basic Law Article 23 in 2003.
Conservatism in Hong Kong has become the backbone of today's pro-Beijing camp, which has been the major supporting force of the SAR administration led by the indirectly elected Chief Executive. It is one of two major political ideologies of the Hong Kong, with the other being liberalism. Since the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, conservatism has been characterised by business elites joining with pro-Communist traditional leftists in a "united front" to resist the rise of the demand for democratisation and liberalisation, in order to secure continued political stability and economic prosperity while maintaining a good relationship with the communist central government in Beijing leading up to and after the 1997 handover.
Jacques Louis Eugène Rouché was a French art and music patron. He was the owner of the journal La Grande Revue and manager of the Théâtre des Arts and the Paris Opera.
José Antonio Urquiza Septién was a Mexican integrist, wealthy landowner, and a key figure in developing Mexican synarchism. Along with many other radical Catholics, Urquiza co-founded the far-right National Synarchist Union (UNS). He had given a considerable amount of his fortune to the organization and heavily financed the group's early activities and growth.
Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915–1949 is a French-language non-fiction book by Lucien Bianco, published in 1967, by Editions Gallimard. It was published in English in 1971, with Muriel Bell as the translator, by Stanford University Press. It analyzes the Chinese Communist Revolution.
The Pacte Synarchique is a historical theory that the surrender of Vichy France was as a result of a conspiracy by French industrial and banking interests to surrender France to Hitler in order to fight Communism.
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