http://tvtropes.org/Main/AnarchyIsChaos

Evey: All this riot and uproar, V... is this Anarchy? Is this the Land of Do-As-You-Please?

V: No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means 'without leaders', not 'without order'. With anarchy comes an age of ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order... this age of ordnung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course... This is not anarchy, Evey. This is chaos. V for Vendetta All this riot and uproar, V... is this Anarchy? Is this the Land of Do-As-You-Please?No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means 'without leaders', not 'without order'. With anarchy comes an age of ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order... this age of ordnung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course... This is not anarchy, Evey. This is chaos.

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A virtually ubiquitous trope, both in fiction and Real Life, is the misconception that anarchists have no beliefs, that anarchy is chaos. While anarchy and chaos are not mutually exclusive (chaos is anarchic, although it often devolves into despotism, but anarchy is not necessarily chaotic) such an un-mindset is properly called nihilism, the belief in nothing. However, the actual definition of Anarchism is the belief that rulership should not exist (as indicated in its Greek roots, an- [no] -arkhos [ruler]). There is much division on the extent and nature of rulership, and what it means.

When used together with Chaos Is Evil, the result is likely to be Bomb-Throwing Anarchists.

This trope is rare/more likely to be averted in Spanish works since a substantial minority of the population formed an anarchist system during the Spanish Civil War. Some of them are still living and anarchist organizations are slightly more mainstream than in most countries. They are still a political minority, though.

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This page is about the use of this trope in fiction. Discussion of this trope in Real Life can be found in our Useful Notes on anarchism.

Examples:

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There's a pizza commercial for one of those "already prepared ready-to-go" pizzas where a guy walks in and asks for a pepperoni pizza and the girl behind the counter turns around, grabs one, and hands it to him. He says something like "No ordering? No waiting? There's no rules!" and begins taking his clothes off. A voice in the background yells "Put your shirt back on!", which he does, still yelling excitedly, ''There's one rule!"

Anime

Averted in Psycho-Pass: in Episode 19, Professor Saiga asks Kougami what the definition of anarchy is, and Kougami replies that it is a denial of governing and authority but is intrinsically different from confusion and disorder. He then reaches the logical conclusion that this means that Makishima cannot, by definition, be an anarchist because even though his desire to overthrow the Sibyl System is genuine, he is bent on causing violence and death wherever he goes and revels in it.

Comic Books

As pointed out in the page quote, V for Vendetta is actually a subversion or inversion, pointing out that "mindless chaos" and "anarchy as a social system" are not, in fact, the same thing. Unfortunately, the peoples' reactions at the end of the comic (and those of many readers as well) demonstrate that not everyone realizes this.

Averted outright with the DC Comics character Anarky, who is in many ways a Lighter and Softer version of the aforementioned V. In one storyline, he is horrified to the point of giving up his big master plan when he is presented with reasonable evidence that anarchy will lead to chaos and will ultimately resurrect the very governments he is trying to oppose.

Carnage is described as an anarchist due to his love of chaos, but he's more of a psychopathic nihilist.

The Invisibles is devoted to averting this trope.

In the Sonic comics the equivalent to the Chaos Emeralds in the Mirror Universe Scourge comes from are called "Anarchy Beryl". They are more abundant but relatively weaker than chaos emeralds, because unlike in Sonic's Universe, they were never all gathered and fused together.

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Film  Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

The 100: The 100 are a mess after Bellamy takes the reins and declares their motto to be "whatever the hell we want". It takes Wells' and Charlotte's deaths and Murphy's exile to make them realize they need laws.

Black Mirror: Actually Subverted in "The Waldo Moment". The idea behind the neutral Waldo party is that it stands for nothing but a cynical "fuck everything" stance to political discourse, and that Waldo is merely a figurehead. In a parliament with no political authority, public vote alone determines law. As a result, the deepest darkest aspects of human nature quickly rise to the top and society quickly degrades into a barking mad, badly-run totalitarian society. All for a foul-mouthed cartoon bear.

In Sons of Anarchy, the motorcycle club is actually very structured. They have a clear hierarchy of power and clearly defined branches of operations. They also have strict rules of operation which include not targeting women and children, protecting the town in which they operate, and looking out for underdogs who are brave enough to approach them. Anyone who disrespects the chain of command or breaks the rules of operation is subject to violent reprisals. The club itself tends to have chaotic results but their planning is shown to premeditated and ordered and all actions have to be brought to a club vote where majority rules. The founders believed not that there should be no rules, but rather that any group that was willing to leave the inherent protections offered by the government's system of rules was entitled to create and live under rules of their own creation.

Star Trek: The Next Generation had the episode "Legacy" featuring the planet Turkana IV, which was the home of a failed Federation colony that had descended into civil war and then lawlessness of the kind generally associated with anarchy. This being Tasha Yar's home world, from which she'd escaped as a teenager, her sister Ishara Yar helped the crew of the Enterprise retrieve two Federation officers whose escape pod had crashed in the ruins of the colony. While things were no longer so chaotic as Tasha had previously described them, Ishara's explanation for this was that the failing government had adopted the two largest political factions known as the Alliance and the Coalition as its emergency police forces, which backfired spectacularly, leaving them fighting over power. From a certain point of view, their violent lives in these two factions' underground strongholds were a slight improvement over the utter lawlessness that prevailed in Tasha's time, when rape gangs roamed the ruins of the city preying on any victims they could find.

Music

The narrator of the Sex Pistols' most famous hit, "Anarchy in the U.K.", appears to hold no political affiliations, and desires nothing more than a chance to channel his baseless anger into mindless violence. I am an anarchist

Don't know what I want

But I know how to get it

I wanna destroy passersby

Is this the M.P.L.A?

Or is this the U.D.A.?

Or is this the I.R.A.?

I thought it was the U.K.!

Podcast

It Could Happen Here: Both played straight and....averted. While the fall of the US government results in large amounts of chaos in the land, Evans also details how chaos wouldn't necessarily come with a pull out of the US government. He also cites a real-life event during Hurricane Katrina where relief workers were expecting chaos, but ended up finding very little violence and destruction save for the hurricane. The narration details your city being abandoned by the US government, and life becoming....semi-normal afterwards. Until the Dominionist forces show up of course.

Professional Wrestling

Anarchy Championship Wrestling is an army of talent and gifted artists working together to create art out of chaos and passion.

Religion

As far back as the Book of Judges in The Bible, we have this quote: "In those days Israel had no king. Everyone did as he pleased."

Tabletop Games

Averted in Eclipse Phase. Posthuman Studios happens to be run by socially progressive transhumanist Anarchists, who put a lot of their politics into the setting, and so the politically anarchist sections of the Solar System (the outer system, mainly) are portrayed a lot more sympathetically than the fascist Jovian Republic or the Mega-Corp-dominated inner system.

Toys

STOP vs SCUM: The SCUMs (Special Coalition Urban Militia) attempt to create global anarchy in a post-apocalyptic world. As the back cover puts it: "city by city they slice through urban lands, stealing and profiting from the chaos and terror they bring".

Video Games

Webcomics

S.S.D.D (which may or may not be an example of Writer on Board in regards to anarchism): The part of the timeline set in the future features (among other super-governments) the Anarchist Collective, which sort of goes back and forth. Officially, there are only two laws, "do not profit at the expense of another anarchist" (which can be interpreted to cover anything from scams to murder), and "there are no other laws". The officials in charge are referred to as "Advisers" who don't put out laws so much as "suggestions"; you can technically break them without any sort of official penalty, but since the only difference between local police, angry crowd and lynch mob is how organized they are... the Collective does have a rather intimidating military, not to mention a secret weapon, though. They still come off as A Lighter Shade of Grey compared to the other prominent factions, largely because things like freedom of speech are Serious Business to them. There's also a reference to "true anarchists" who live in the wasteland between cities, taking potshots at passing vehicles. Meanwhile, in the present-day timeline we have Norman. He might be an Axe-Crazy pyromaniac and Mad Bomber with an acute case of Comedic Sociopathy and an aversion to anything resembling work, but he still shows occasional signs of Hidden Depths, and anarchism clearly means a lot more to him than an excuse to set fire to things.

Big Head Press has featured several comic series. These depict fantasy civilizations Past, present and future largely using an anarcho-capitalist system. Scott Bieser is the writer for these series, and appears to partially advocate those systems. But they are all too silly to be taken seriously. So it is hardly a manifesto.

Web Original

This is one of the main pro-democracy arguments on Twitch Plays Pokémon.

Surprisingly subverted in the Yogscast miniseries Cornerstone. In Week 6, the group collectively decided they'd go without a mayor and leave the usual teams of people to do as they wanted for that session. They did surprisingly well, with Hat Films expanding the base significantly, Sips and Sjin building a basic farm, Duncan Jones, Kim Richards and Hannah Rutherford all harvesting rubber to make jetpacks and Strippin and Benji working on Railcraft.

Western Animation