People often use anarchy and chaos interchangeably. They refer to civil unrest as “anarchy, total chaos.” As an anarchist of the anarcho-libertarian variety myself, naturally, this habit irks me. Anarchy is simply the absence of forceful authority. Chaos is disorder. The two things can coexist, but it may be shocking to some to find that the presence of the one does not imply the presence of the other. Nor does the absence of the one imply the absence of the other. They are neither unrelated nor equivalent. And the correlation between the two can often be surprising. This is particularly … Continue reading Anarchy and Chaos in Black Communities