Synarchism

Synarchism (from Greek words meaning "to rule together" or "harmonious rule", in Spanish Sinarquismo) is a word that has been used to describe several different political processes in various contexts.

Joint rule

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 most substantive 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 and society. 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 by viewing it as an organic unity. He defended social differentiation and hierarchy with co-operation between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups: Synarchy, as opposed to anarchy. Specifically, Saint-Yves envisioned a European society governed by an enlightened oligarchy composed of three councils, representing economic power, judicial power, and scientific community - of which the metaphysical chamber bound the whole structure together.

Rule by secret societies

Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, an occultist, also used the word "synarchy" to describe government by secret societies (or, more precisely, esoteric societies) composed of oracles. Although he associated this form of governance with paranormal subterranean beings from the land of Shambhala and Agartha, who supposedly communicated with him telepathically, these secret societies could be composed of an illuminated elite belonging to any religious, spiritual or esoteric tradition. Saint-Yves d'Alveydre believed that the ideal government of Synarchy was transferred underground at the start of the Kali-Yuga era, around 3,200 B.C.

American political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche regularly uses the word "synarchy" to denote rule by a secret elite, though not a paranormal one. He describes a wide-ranging historical "movement", "organization" or "phenomenon", involving Martinists and their ideological descendants. He claims that during the Great Depression an international combination of financial institutions, raw materials cartels, and intelligence operatives such as John Foster Dulles, installed fascist regimes throughout Europe (and tried to do so in Mexico) to maintain order and prevent the repudiation of international debts. LaRouche identifies Dick Cheney as a latter-day "synarchist", and claims that the "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."

Synarchism in various parts of the world

Mexican synarchism

Main article: Mexican synarchism

"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 leftist and secularist policies of the revolutionary (PNR, PRM, and PRI) governments that ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000.

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 the movement regrouped as the Popular Force Party (Partido Fuerza Popular). Synarchism revived as a political movement in the 1970s through the Mexican Democratic Party (PDM), whose candidate, Ignacio González Gollaz, polled 1.8 percent of the vote at the 1982 presidential election. In 1988 Gumersindo Magaña Negrete 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 apparently right-wing orientation, the other apparently left-wing.

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, the party in power since 2000 first with Vicente Fox and now with Felipe Calderón (since 2006) as presidents. Sinarquistas are influential policy makers in matters like education and health.

Chinese synarchism

Harvard historian and sinologist John K. Fairbank also used the word "synarchism" 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 late Qing dynasty in China.

Fairbank's synarchy is a form of rule by co-opting existing elites and powers, bringing them into the system and legitimising them through a schedule of rituals and tributes that gave them a stake in the Chinese regime and neutralised any risk that they might rebel against the monarchy. He believed that the Qing, who were considered outside rulers because of their Manchu origins, had developed this strategy out of necessity because they did not have their own political base in China. This conception of Qing rule is not universally accepted among sinologists and historians of China, but is a respected, mainstream view with significant support in the field.

Hong Kong

The term is also used by some political scientists to describe the British colonial government in Hong Kong (1842-1997). Ambrose King, in his controversial 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.

French synarchism

According to former OSS officer William Langer (Our Vichy Gamble, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1947), there were French industrial and banking interests who "even before the war, had turned to Nazi Germany and had looked to Hitler as the savior of Europe from Communism... These people were as good fascists as any in Europe... Many of them had extensive and intimate business relations with German interests and were still dreaming of a new system of "synarchy", which meant government of Europe on fascist principles by an international brotherhood of financiers and industrialists." Historian Annie Lacroiz-Riz wrote a book on this subject, titled Le choix de la défaite : Les élites françaises dans les années 1930 (The Choice of Defeat: the French elites in the 1930s, 2006 . 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 non existed".

External links

Secret societies

• On Synarchy

Mexican synarchism

• Template:Es icon National Synarchist Union (Website of the right-wing UNS)

Chinese synarchism

• Review of Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast