A New Holy Alliance on the Horizon?

"Defending Religion, Peace and Justice" by Suppressing Freedom of Expression

The previous post was about the unfolding of an ideological, anti-secular and anti-liberal "geopolitical cooperation". An interesting, though little known, parallel from the past is the Holy Alliance of the 19th century. It seems particularly timely to briefly recall this initiative. Historical analogies do not, of course, imply that the events of the periods in question are identical, but that certain essential mechanisms are similar. This is all that will be discussed here (and very briefly).

The Holy Alliance (Svyaschenko Union), which was founded in 1815, also with Russian help, at the inspiration of Tsar Alexander I, was originally formed with the participation of Russia, Austria and Prussia. Its aim was explicitly to promote so-called Christian values and to restore the religious legitimacy of the ruling power, in opposition to the secular ideas of the French Revolution, which Napoleon had also promoted. (The latter included, for example, the Code Civil, which came into force in 1804 and enshrined the principle of individual liberty and the secular nature of the state, freeing civil institutions from ecclesiastical control and 'for the first time in history' placing state law on a 'purely rational basis ', free of transcendent religious references.) As the text of the Treaty establishing the Holy Alliance puts it,

the founding states, as members of a great Christian world nation, joined together "for the defence of Religion, Peace and Justice".

Moreover, the originator, the Russian Tsar Alexander I, was under a similar apocalyptic millenarian Protestant religious influence (believing in the creation of the Kingdom of God on earth for a thousand years before the so-called last judgement) when he established this international cooperation, which, as we have seen in the above-mentioned post, also plays an important role in the establishment of the present "holy alliance". So much so, that the idea of a geopolitical organisation of a religious nature was allegedly put forward to the Russian ruler by a spiritual adviser to the Tsar, who then turned the idea into reality.

In practice, the lofty principle of "defending religion, peace and justice" has inevitably been accompanied by the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press. For example, the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, promoted by the Holy Alliance, banned student unions on German territory, restricted educational freedom and introduced strict censorship of the press, thus making it largely impossible for those who held political views that differed from those of the authorities to express them. Similar regulations were introduced in Russia, the Habsburg monarchy and France, where caricatures and theatrical performances were subject to strict censorship. And of course, part of this was the rise of government propaganda. In Germany, for example, a quite sophisticated version of this was the explicit attempt to influence local newspapers by the government. The introduction of all these practices had a lasting negative impact on freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Europe.

Image: Sacred politics in practice. A cartoon mocking the restrictions on the press and free speech during the Holy Alliance period, with men wearing muzzles. The sign above the table reads "How long are we allowed to think?"". The sign in the top right corner lists the rules of the so-called Thinkers' Club, for example: II. The first rule of learned society is silence; III. To prevent any member from entering the prison who lets his tongue loose, a muzzle is issued on entry."

As a lesson, it is worth noting that the Holy Alliance of two hundred years ago did not, of course, create "the kingdom of God," but at best, for a time, the "divinity" of kings. Nor should we expect anything different today.

"And as for defending either the Bible or Christ," a Presbyterian Christian pastor of Jewish origin in Hungary, Adolf Saphir(1831-1891), challenged these tendencies,

whoever asked us to do it? Certainly not Christ, for He told us to be His witnesses and not His advocates, and He has promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church. The defence is in His own hand, while He has left the testimony in ours.

Front cover: Alfred le Petit's (1841-1909) caricature mocking censorship on the front page of the French newspaper Le Grelot, 1873.