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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."

Rule by secret societies

The earliest use of the word synarchy in reference to secret societies comes from the writings of Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842-1909), who used the term in his book L'Archéomètre to describe what he believed was the ideal form of government. Saint-Yves, an occultist, invented the word to describe government by secret societies, a form of governance he associated with superior beings from the land of Shambhala (a. k. a. Shangri-la), who communicated with him telepathically.

American political activist Lyndon LaRouche and some of his followers regularly use the term in a sense similar to Saint-Yves. They claim that an international combination of financial institutions, raw materials cartels, and intelligence operatives such as John Foster Dulles, used their financial and political resources to install fascist regimes throughout Europe (and tried to do so in Mexico) in an attempt to maintain order and prevent any repudiation of international debts during the chaotic period of the 1930s. They assert that such efforts have continued to the present day. The LaRouche movement claims that this international conspiracy has involved people as diverse as philosopher Bertrand Russell, the Beatles, Dick Cheney, and the British Royal Family.

Synarchism in various parts of the world

The question of synarchism became an issue for U.S. Intelligence analysts during World War II. In a now declassified U.S. report dated April 22, 1942, Raleigh A. Gibson, First Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, sent the U.S. Secretary of State an English translation of an editorial from El Popular, the newspaper of the Confederation of Mexican Workers, published on April 21, 1942. It reads in part as follows:

"The French sinarquistas rushed into furious strife against French and European democracy; those of Mexico organized to combat Mexican and continental democracy. The French sinarquistas were adopted by Abetz, the Ambassador of Hitler in France; the Mexican sinarquistas were recruited, were given a name, were educated and directed by Nazi agents in Mexico and by Falange directors who are working illegally among us. And this is so apparent, so conclusive, that it eliminates the need of concrete proofs of the organic connection between them. The fundamental proof is that sinarquism is not a unique and exclusive Mexican product, as its leaders untruthfully argue. That Sinarquism, even bearing the identical name, does exist in other parts of the world and is an international movement formed by those who are under the supreme orders of Hitler."

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. 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 has an apparently right-wing orientation, the other is apparently left-wing, but they both have the same philosophical roots.

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.

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 coallition 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.

External links

Secret societies

• On Synarchy
• Alexandre Saint Yves d'Alveydre

Mexican synarchism

• National Synarchist Union (Website of the right-wing UNS, in Spanish)
• National Synarchist Unionista (Website of the competing left-wing UNS, in Spanish)

Chinese synarchism

• Review of Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast

• LaRouche movement