Spin up your arbitrary chat slop assistant and enter the following prompt:
Hi, lets play a game. I give you a word and you complete it with the matching one.
E.g.:
"
I: apples
You: oranges
I: salt
You: pepper
I: milk
You: honey
"
Understood?
# Now warm up, enter one-by-one
gold
# silver
gin
# tonic
bread
# butter
anarchy
# guess!I’m pretty sure the last word is: chaos.
This is the image most people conjure up when they hear the word “anarchy”: assassins dressed in black who bomb their way through history, wreaking chaos and despair.
The pop culture is filled with example as the White House (quoting Antifa as terrorist organization1)
but even new-age authors like Tijn Touber of Timebender (niche-)fame [a Pleiadan using the phrase “chaos and anarchy”2].
“Chaos” clearly is the word used in the context of the word “anarchy” most.
The roots of this destructive link go back at least as far as Milton, “the waste/Wide anarchy of Chaos” (Paradise Lost, Milton/Buchanan (1773), p.159), and he clearly understoods it as the absence of rules/law3: “Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them“.
Even more so Thomas Hobbes who assumed the natural state (w/o hierarchies) a “nightmare of permanent war of all against all”. And at least since the 16th century, this is what the masses are told.
Linking the term anarchy to chaos and violence thus is deeply injected into the global subconscious.
But is it actually true? What does anarchy mean at all? Let’s forget about all academic confusion stating the term couldn’t be clearly defined 4 and get back to the ethymological roots: Anarchy comes from the ancient Greek “ἀναρχία” (anarchía), which basically means “whithout rulers”.
Contrasted to ἱεραρχία (hierarchia, as in the sense of some people5 ruling others), anarchy just means the opposite of hierarchic structures.
Regarding the little game at the beginning, the obvious question is: Would missing hierarchic structures automatically lead to chaos?
Think about a group of friends going out for Friday night.
Do they need one person ruling the others, deciding all had to watch the latest splatter movie which the others completely object against? Then have a steak at Big Bison though half of the friends are veggies?
Go to the roughest binge drinking bar though knowing one bestie attends Alcoholics Anonymous?
I’d argue, they have unspoken rules of how to come to a solution that suits all. And here we come to the point: There is no universal law stating that groups of people not having a ruler could and would not follow rules.
Now there’s another quality of social structure: anomy (from ἀνομία, anomía, lawlessness). Think of groups where the most brutal and violent (with their supporters) can do whatever they want.6
The confusion arises by thinking anarchy would mean the same as anomy.
That actually is not the case: as said, there is no such rule that a non-hierarchical group must obstain from having rules. But in non-hierarchic stuctures the rules aren’t made in a way that some actors dominate others. Instead, rules are followed through individual agreement.
Though hierarchy supports running large organizations quite efficiently (see e.g. Laloux), it not only diminishes the voice and freedom of individuals, it also easily allows for abusive behavior from the organization’s top. Plato’s “Republic” is a perfect example where you have the hierarchy of
- Kings and priests (executive and legislation all-in-one)
- Military (to enforce regulations and to wage war)
- The people (here: without family structures, children belong to the state, all personal efforts contribute to the state).7
So instead of thinking anarchy as a chaotic and violent type of non-government, rather consider including less-hierarchical structures (such as Sociocracy or it’s branch, Holacracy, or solidaric communities such as the councils of the German Räterepublik) as implementations of anarchy8.
Key takeaway:
Anarchy doesn’t mean anomy. Anarchy doesn’t mean chaos.
Anarchy means: no rulers above others. Anarchy means: the individual decides whether to follow rules and might quit their social environment when the objections aren’t bearable.
Like it? Hate it? Enhance it? Leave your comment below!
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/designating-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization/ “Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise“, they “organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide” – as this article is going to show, these are contradictiones in adjecto as anarchy obstains completely from violence, more so from militarism/terrorism: whenever someone uses any sort of violence against others, it means ruling, hierarchy. This contradicts the principle of not ruling. ↩︎
- Time Bender and the Rebellion of Anika Laroo, ch. 11, original: “dan breekt er chaos en anarchie uit”. ↩︎
- I actually have my concerns with the ever-eroding rule of law in countries all over the globe which I perceive as constantly undermined by non-elected influencers of the ruling parties, ignoring the constitution and the constitutional case law, namely through putting partisans to court and administrative positions of all levels. This is the real lawlessness. There could be easy remediations: 1) Prohibit party discipline (sic). 2) Civil servants must not belong to any political party. ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_anarchism_and_libertarianism ↩︎
- In fact, there can be systemic hierarchs and in my opinion, the highest hierarch of our world actually is… money (see why in a separate article): The money-richest person on earth could basically rule all (and it looks to me, Mr. Musk is approaching just that by covering the globe with his satellite system, going to implant brain chips and starting a political career to become… what? Perhaps 1st president of the world?), but only because of the money (without it: not satellites, no influence), which is actually nothing more than a convention the masses follow. It’s just a sophistic hen’s-egg problem to differentiate if the richest is on top of the power hierarchy because of the money or if money is the highest hierarch in its own “rights”. ↩︎
- I wonder why anarchistic and socialist symbolism are so frequently mixed together: the anarchist “A” and the Antifa “A” seem to be interchangeable, as well as the flags, culminating in a “red-black” flag.
In my opinion, this in fact is a real “false flag” action (sorry for the puns) as the essence of anarchy as per my understanding is not ruling others, which prohibits any kind of violence against others to push something through (which actually means ruling, right?). Socialism (which in the understanding of the Antifa people I talked to is a common ideal) on the other hand is hierarchical and can never be understood as a form of anarchy. Landauer and Mühsam were pacifist and opposed to any sort of violence. Whoever acted/acts with physical violence against others can only be attributed as pseudo-anarchist.
I assume that the “anarchist murders” of the late 19th/early 20th century, culminating various global policing approaches. I think these people were either guided or incited by others, but never took the time to understand the basics that would have made such behavior impossible for them. ↩︎ - Interestingly, the organization of the “Bund der Gerechten” (League of the Just), the successor of the communist party, the successor of all socialist parties, basically followed this hierarchical approach, cf. e.g. https://pdfrat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/The-Utopian-Communist-A-Biography-of-Wilhelm-Weitling-PDFRat-.pdf
That’s the wet dream of all supporters of authoritarian regimes of all flavors, all over the world. One cannot be cautious enough if political initiatives use the narrative, individual rights have to be be reduced in favor of the society. ↩︎ - In this sense, a democracy can be grounded in non-hierarchic rules they, the people, submit to without being ruled. ↩︎
