Red Hibiscus Society

Red Hibiscus Society Société de l'hibiscus rouge
Red Hibiscus lapel pin
Leader	Louis Barnave
Founded	1910
Dissolved	12 November 1933 (1933-11-12) (banned by decree by the Grand Alliance)
Headquarters	Jameston, Saint-Brendan, Viceroyalty of the New Aurean
Newspaper	Le Cri du Peuple
Youth wing	Jeunesse Fraternelle
Armed wing	Special Reserve Police
Membership (1927)	Around 10,000
Ideology	National Functionalism
Political position	Far-right
Religion	Solarian Catholic
Region	Viceroyalty of the New Aurean
Slogan	"For God and Empire" (Gaullican: Pour dieu et royaume)

The Red Hibiscus Society (Gaullican: Société de l'hibiscus rouge), officially known as the Jameston Fraternal Society (Gaullican: Société fraternelle de Jameston), was a National Functionalist political organization and paramilitary force that existed on the Viceroyalty of the New Aurean, during the 1920s and 1930s. The Society was mainly based in Saint Brendan, modern day Carucere, but it also operated a major branch in Sainte-Chloé. The organization was the main pro-functionalist political organization in the Viceroyalty during the Functionalist era. The Society's popular name originates from the flower garden in front of the society's meeting place in Jameston, Carucere.

The Society was founded in Jameston sometime in 1910 by members of a Catholic trade union as a social club. Under the leadership of Louis Barnave, it transformed into a pro-Functionalist political movement during the 1910s. After the Popular Party rose to power in Gaullica in 1919, it emerged as a major political force that advocated for the complete reorganization of colonial society along functionalist lines. At its height in the late-1920s, it effectively functioned as a state within a state in Saint Brendan and a powerful political faction in Sainte-Chloé. The organization's membership was overwhelmingly white middle class, although many wealthy creoles participated. It opposed the existing colonial administration, which remained staunchly conservative, and clashed with dissent socialists, liberals, and Carucerean progressives. The Society was the driving force behind the Holistique National movement and oversaw its implementation in Sainte Brendan. In Sainte Brendan the Society often silenced critics, broke up demonstrations and murdered opponents. Following the outbreak of the Great War, the Society's armed wing was reformed into the Special Reserve Police and tasked with keeping order and suppressing opponents to the war.

The Society was banned after the colony was occupied by Grand Alliance forces in 1933, after which many of its prominent members were arrested. After the colony's incorporation into the Arucian Federation, many of its members were at blacklisted from the civil service and political offices until 1940 after officials realized that it meant excluding much of Carucerean society. Many of its members would later join the conservative National Party of Carucere and form part of the opposition to the Democratic Party. Jean Preval served as a member of the Special Reserve Police in the later years of the Great War, although he denied killing anyone or participating in the Society's political activities.

Ideology

Main article: National Functionalism

The Society espoused a distinct form of National Functionalism shaped by the white minority elite and colonial institutions of Gaullica's Arucian colonies. The organization sought to complete the "civilizing" mission of the Holistique movement by launching a social revolution from above to completely remake the colonial society of the New Aurean according to the Functionalist vision. At the height of its power, the Society emphasized the tenets of civic nationalism, authoritarianism, political violence, and the communauté populaire in its implementation of the ideology.

The Society's ultimate goal was the assimilation of the Viceroyalty's nonwhite population into the Gaullican national civic identity. In a pamphlet published in 1920, Louis Barnave wrote, "the New Aurean shall be made part of the Gaullican Nation through our careful tutelage of the population." This was pursued by two programs, the Holistique National education movement and the infamous Résolution 31, the implementation of Blanchiment, or the racial whitening of the population. The organization embraced Claude Jarrets and his Holistique National movement which abandoned the mainline movement's emphasis on philosophizing and active learning in favor of instilling Gaullican culture, language, morals, and values. Jarrets sought to further the Holistique's goals of rooting out heterodox syncretic and non-Catholic religious beliefs and promoting the Gaullican language by forced religious conversions and the active suppression of creole languages. Although National Functionalism explicitly dismissed the concept of race, the ubiquitous nature of racial divisions in the Arucian forced a pragmatic recognition. To address this ideological contradiction, the Society initially advocated for the "abolishment of societal divisions" by encouraging white men to marry indigenous women, thereby raising creole children to indoctrinate into the Functionalist ideology. Barnave and his supporters believed that through this process the non-white population, mainly Bahians and Gosans, would be completely replaced by a Creole population that the Functionalists could up-bring into model Gaullican citizens. The general reluctance of indigenous families to marry their daughters to white men led to Résolution 31 in 1922, which led to forced marrying of educated girls in boarding schools to white men.