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]
According to former OSS officer William Langer, [6] some French industrial and banking interests even before the war, had turned to Nazi Germany and had looked to Hitler as the savior of Europe from Communism.
This theory allegedly originated with the discovery of a document called Pacte Synarchique following the death (May 19, 1941) of Jean Coutrot, former member of Groupe X-Crise, on May 15, 1941. 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. This led to the belief that La Cagoule, a far-right organisation, was the armed branch of French synarchism, and that some important members of the Vichy Regime were synarchists. The Vichy government ordered an investigation, leading to the Rapport Chavin [7] but no evidence for the existence of the Mouvement Synarchiste d'Empire was found. Most of the presumed synarchists were either associated with the Banque Worms or with Groupe X-Crise; they were close to Admiral François Darlan (Vichy prime minister 1941–1942), and this has led to the belief[ by whom? ] that synarchists had engineered the military defeat of France for the profit of Banque Worms. [8]
This belief system has been dismissed as a "work of a paranoid imagination which wove together the histories of three disparate groups of activists, creating a conspiracy among them where none existed". [9] Most historians [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [ excessive citations ] affirm that the Pacte Synarchique was a hoax created by some French collaborators with Nazi Germany to weaken Darlan and his Vichy technocrats. [19] Only the far-left historian Annie Lacroix-Riz defends the idea that the synarchy existed. [20] [21]
Lyndon LaRouche, leader of the LaRouche movement, describes 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. [22] He claims 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. [23] LaRouche identifies the former U.S. vice president and former PNAC member Dick Cheney as a modern "synarchist", and claims 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." [24]
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. Not all historians of China find this persuasive, but it is a respected[ according to whom? ], mainstream view. [25] [26] [27]
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. [28]
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), [29] 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, [30] 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).
Paul Claudel was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism.
Jean Louis Xavier François Darlan was a French admiral and political figure. Born in Nérac, Darlan graduated from the École navale in 1902 and quickly advanced through the ranks following his service during World War I. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1929, vice admiral in 1932, lieutenant admiral in 1937 before finally being made admiral and Chief of the Naval Staff in 1937. In 1939, Darlan was promoted to admiral of the fleet, a rank created specifically for him.
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.
Henri d'Astier de La Vigerie was a French soldier, Résistance member, and conservative politician.
Salvador Abascal Infante was a Mexican politician and leading exponent of Mexican synarchism. For a time the leader of the National Synarchist Union (UNS), Abascal represented the orthodox Catholic tendency within the movement.
The National Synarchist Union is 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 continue to exist.
José Aboulker was a French Algerian Jew and the leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in French Algeria in World War II. He received the U.S. Medal of Freedom, the Croix de Guerre, and was made a Companion of the Liberation and a Commander of the Légion d'honneur. After the war, he became a neurosurgeon and a political figure in France, who advocated for the political rights of Algerian Muslims.
Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle was a royalist member of the French Resistance during World War II. He assassinated Admiral of the Fleet François Darlan, the former chief of government of Vichy France and the high commissioner of French North Africa and West Africa, on 24 December 1942.
The French State, popularly known as Vichy France, as led by Marshal Philippe Pétain after the Fall of France in 1940 before Nazi Germany, was quickly recognized by the Allies, as well as by the Soviet Union, until 30 June 1941 and Operation Barbarossa. However, France broke with the United Kingdom after the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Canada maintained diplomatic relations until the occupation of Southern France by Germany and Italy in November 1942.
Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the 1940 armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. Though Paris was nominally its capital, the government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "free zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. The occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, but in November 1942 the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France, ending any pretence of independence by the Vichy government.
Jacques Michel Gabriel Paul Benoist-Méchin was a French far right politician and writer. He was born and died in Paris. Well known as a journalist and historian, he later became prominent for his collaborationism under the Vichy regime. After his conviction in 1947 and release from prison in 1954, he became an Arab world expert in the second part of his life.
Jean Coutrot was a French engineer.
Annie Lacroix-Riz is a French historian, professor emeritus of modern history at the university Paris VII - Denis Diderot, specialist in the international relations in first half of the 20th century and collaboration.
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.
Yves-Marie Bercé, is a French historian known for his work on popular revolts of the modern era. He is a member of the Institut de France.
Charles Noguès was a French general. He graduated from the École Polytechnique, and he was awarded the Grand Croix of the Legion of Honour in 1939.
The Government of Vichy France was the collaborationist ruling regime or government in Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. Of contested legitimacy, it was headquartered in the town of Vichy in occupied France, but it initially took shape in Paris under Marshal Philippe Pétain as the successor to the French Third Republic in June 1940. The government remained in Vichy for four years, and fled into exile to Germany in September 1944 after the Allied invasion of France. It operated as a government-in-exile until April 1945, when the Sigmaringen enclave was taken by Free French forces. Pétain was brought back to France, by then under control of the Provisional French Republic, and put on trial for treason.
The French Civil and Military High Command was an administrative and military governing body in Algiers that was created in connection with the Allied landings in French North Africa on 7 and 8 November 1942 as part of Operation Torch. It came about as a result of negotiations between the Americans and two military figures from Vichy France whom the Americans believed could assure safe passage for the landing forces, namely Henri Giraud and François Darlan.
The Law of 3 October 1940 on the status of Jews was a law enacted by Vichy France. It provided a legal definition of the expression Jewish race, which was used during the Nazi occupation for the implementation of Vichy's ideological policy of "National Revolution" comprising corporatist and antisemitic racial policies. It also listed the occupations forbidden to Jews meeting the definition. The law was signed by Marshall Philippe Pétain and the main members of his government.
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.
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