"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's[sic] natural manure"
—Thomas Jefferson
Ah, yes! Do you smell that? Smoke and fire? You can see the flying molotov cocktails. You can see the Riot Police frantically deploying from their APCs, armed with their ballistic shields and tear gas? Do you hear the screams as the nation burns down with the fires of liberation?
This is the index of Civil Unrest Tropes, covering all things where society and chaos intersect.
Often occurs in hellish places and when indexes cry for freedom against their tyrants. Part of Politics Tropes.
Tropes:
Related indexes:
- Anarchy Is Chaos: Removal of government or laws results in widespread violence.
- Anarcho-Tyranny: A corrupt regime decides to maintain a state of perpetual lawlessness so that nobody has the time to rebel against them.
- Assassination Attempt: Someone (usually a powerful leader of some sort) is targeted for murder by their enemies.
- Tyrannicide: Assassinating a brutal tyrant to end their repressive reign.
- Balkanize Me: A larger country splits into multiple smaller ones, often following civil war or political instability leading to its collapse.
- Burning the Flag: Desecrating a (domestic or foreign) national flag as a statement of protest.
- Civil War: An internal military conflict in which government forces fight with a rebel movement or other rival factions for control of an entire country (or at least a region within it).
- Crapsack World: The world is a miserable place to live in, breeding enough resentment for civil unrest to happen.
- Les Collaborateurs: A member of the conquered group who works with the conquerors willingly.
- The Coup: Overthrow of the government by illegal means other than full-scale rebellion.
- Military Coup: Military officers overthrow their (usually civilian) superiors to seize control of the government for themselves.
- Defiant Stone Throw: A meek character publicly defies a much more powerful character as a symbolic act.
- Divided We Fall: Dissension within the hero's alliance.
- Draft Dodging: When someone (illegally) refuses to enlist for mandatory military service, often as part of an anti-war movement or more general dissent against the government.
- Dystopian Oz
- Emergency Authority: A public official is granted authority powers they wouldn't otherwise legally have in order to avert a catastrophe. This often ends badly.
- Enemy Civil War
- Failed State: A nation whose central government has all but collapsed, leaving it unable to perform basic functions.
- Fantastic Terrorists: Extremist militants who are motivated by Fantastic Racism or some other ideology that can only exist within a Speculative Fiction setting.
- Full-Circle Revolution: The old corrupt regime is overthrown by a new corrupt regime, which is at least just as bad as (if not even worse than) their predecessors.
- Graffiti of the Resistance
- Hero with Bad Publicity: The public hates this heroic character.
- Icon of Rebellion
- Lingering Social Tensions: Tensions remain between groups after a conflict.
- Manifesto-Making Malcontent: When a character writes some kind of manifesto, it's a sure sign of them posing a danger to the current way of things.
- Mob War: When rival criminal organizations fight with each other for control of territories. In extreme cases, this may be caused by (or result in) a prolonged state of violent lawlessness for a city or region, with local authorities being too corrupt or incompetent to restore law and order.
- Movement Mascot
- Occupiers Out of Our Country: Get out of our country, you foreign imperialist oppressors!
- Outcast Refuge: A (relatively) safe haven for those oppressed during civil unrest.
- Police Brutality: Violent abuses by law enforcement officers against common citizens can be both a cause and effect of politically-charged protests and riots; from cops injuring or killing somebody inspiring public outrage against that incident, to protestors getting attacked by riot police even if they weren't acting violently.
- Post-Peak Oil: A world where oil has run out.
- Powder Keg Crowd: One spark away from a riot.
- Prison Riot: Mass violence erupts inside a detention facility, often due to the inmates rebelling against the guards and jailors.
- Protest by Obstruction: Protesting the destruction of something, usually a tree or building, by chaining yourself to that thing or otherwise physically blocking it off.
- Rabble Rouser: Someone who stirs a mob up to act.
- Rage Within the Machine
- Reign of Terror
- La Résistance: A revolutionary movement trying to fight back against the current regime in power.
- Restrained Resistance, Reckless Rebellion: Where one side advocates a restrained, controlled approach while the other goes all in, consequences be damned.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Bureaucratized
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized
- The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified
- Revolving Door Revolution
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: A traitor is rewarded with betrayal in turn.
- Secret Police: A law-enforcement/intelligence agency tasked with brutally cracking down on all dissent against the government.
- Slave Liberation: Slave laborers try to win their freedom, often by escaping from (or even revolting against) their masters.
- Spark of the Rebellion: A small act of defiance against The Empire kickstarts a rebellion.
- Staged Populist Uprising: What seems to be a popular revolution is actually not being done with the people's best interest in mind.
- Suffrage and Political Liberation
- Torches and Pitchforks: An angry mob is formed to engage in rioting.
- Torn Apart by the Mob: When a lynch mob brutally murders anyone they consider to be their enemy.
- Urban Hellscape: The inner-city area that is overrun by crime and poverty.
- Velvet Revolution: The revolution is (mostly) peaceful.
- The Voice of a Generation
- Voice of the Resistance
- Wretched Hive
- You Cannot Kill An Idea
- Can't Stop the Signal: Killing me won't stop the information from getting out.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Depending on where your personal bias leans, rebel fighters are either heroic revolutionaries resisting the oppressive regime, or evil terrorists who only desire to be violent oppressors themselves.
