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Can lead to a [[Reign of Terror|violent ideological backlash]] against supporters of the old regime, [[Truth in Television|as seen in history]]. But more importantly -- more important because of the [[Irony]] involved -- it can lead and has led to violence against some of the revolutionaries themselves, often valiant leaders and close friends of near past, as in the most famous case of Georges Danton guillotined by [[Maximilien Robespierre|Robespierre]] during the [[Real Life|actual]] [[Reign of Terror]]. Robespierre tasted his own concoction later as of the Thermidorian Reaction.
 
See also [[Right -Wing Militia Fanatic]]. Generally falls under [[Black and Grey Morality]]. Contrast [[The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified]] and [[Velvet Revolution]].
 
Likely to overlap with [[Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters]]. If the revolution is against [[The Empire]] or other terrible government, examples this trope may also be [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned Extremists]]. Succeeding, could well [[Meet the New Boss|turn into]] [[People's Republic of Tyranny]]. Some characters in such a setting may be [[Necessarily Evil]] and the more self-aware of those will realize that [[No Place for Me There|there's no place for them]] in the world they're creating.
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== Film ==
* The workers in [[Fritz Lang]]'s ''[[Metropolis]]'' are somewhere between this and an [[Torches and Pitchforks|Angry Mob]].
* ''[[The Wind That Shakes the Barley]]'', starring [[Cillian Murphy]], won the Palme d'Or award for its application of this trope to the Irish Revolution (and then the [[We ARE Struggling Together!|Civil War]]), so it must have done something right. <ref>In [[Real Life]], when the War of Independence ended, a significant amount of the next decade was spent by the new Irish government trying to get rid of the IRA, since they had been fighting for independence of the entire island, which the Free State government traded away, with the South becoming self-governing and then (with the Republic of Ireland in 1949) fully independent by itself. The Civil War (which is the worst things got) began when partition occurred under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, setting up the Free State government in the South. Much of the IRA became the Free State Army, while the rest rebelled, refusing to accept the referendum ratifying the treaty, seeking to unify all of Ireland. [[It Got Worse]].</ref>
* The [[Alternate History]] film ''[[It Happened Here]]'', set in a [[Day of the Jackboot|Nazi-occupied Britain]], deliberately subverts the gallant resistance trope. The protagonist witnesses the death of her friends in a shootout between local partisans and German soldiers, and the movie ends with prisoners from a British SS unit being massacred by their captors.
* [[Discussed]] in ''[[Lord of War]]'':
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* ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'', {{spoiler|Gaeta's}} Mutiny and ''especially'' the New Caprican Resistance.
* Udara in the ''[[Alien Nation (TV)|Alien Nation]]'' telemovie of the same name, a group of Tenctonese terrorists who resorted to brainwashing their own children into assassins and suicide bombers to fight the Overseers on the Slave Ship. Even after the slave's emancipation, Tenctonese sentiment was divided on whether the Udara were freedom fighters or extremists who did more harm than good.
* ''[[Blake's Seven (TV)|Blakes Seven]]''. While [[La Résistance]] are clearly better than the Federation, the main cast are all anti-heroes at best and Blake is often called on his devotion to the Rebellion over taking care of his people. And then he was replaced with Avon, who didn't even ''pretend'' to take care.
* In ''[[V|V: The Miniseries]]'' the Resistance used biological warfare against the enemy. Given that most Visitors lived in sealed starships and thus had the option of simply leaving unharmed, it's not quite as nasty as it sounds.
* The Bajoran Resistance in ''[[Star Trek]]: [[Deep Space Nine]]''. They were anti-heroes at the very best, had a running mantra of [[I Did What I Had to Do]] and were sometimes even explicitly referred to as "terrorists", and not just by Cardassians (though usually). Ditto the Maquis.
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== Real Life ==
* Be warned: [[Your Mileage May Vary|Your mileage WILL vary]]. Try to keep it civil.
* Most historical revolutions have ultimately ended up looking this way. Just look at [[Maximilien Robespierre|Robespierre]], Lenin, [[Mao Ze Dong]], Pol Pot, or all manner of other bloody tyrants brought in as revolutionaries against an old, corrupt government. Even the American Revolution had various massacres of-and-by Tories, mass lynchings, plus invasions of both the recognized sovereign Iroquois state and what would eventually become Canada. There were similarly-violent [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing:King David Hotel bombing|fringe groups]] fighting for Israel's independence. Later we have Hamas and Hezbollah, though they only rarely hit military targets.
** Before any of the totalitarian figures listed above ever came to power, there was [[Jean Jacques Rousseau]]. [[The Theme Park Version]] of his philosophy is often taught as an advocacy for total democracy, in which people are completely informed about all issues and decide, as a unanimous whole, what is beneficial to them. Less appealing to modern sensibilities is what he advocated as the [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|means to these ends]]: Among other things, the abolition of religion in favor of one civil religion that basically worshiped the state, the abolition of parenting in favor of communal rearing, and the abolition of just about every other thing that makes people unique from one another. Far from the naturalist/anarchist he's often been [[Flanderization|flanderized]] into, you could argue that Rousseau invented the [[People's Republic of Tyranny]].
* In the vein of ''Weather Underground'', Europe had its share of student revolutionaries; Red Army Faction, or RAF, and Brigade Rosse in West Germany and Italy respectively. The former is somewhat notable to only officially cease activity at the late half of the 90's. Both organizations were behind a small number of violent acts towards the governments.
* The [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_constitutional_crisis_of_1993:Russian constitutional crisis of 1993|1993 Constitutional Crisis]] initiated by then-President Boris Yeltsin might be thought of as a much-delayed counter-revolution, rather than a revolution, but given that the Soviet Union had already been fairly peacefully dissolved more than a year earlier, Yeltsin's orders for elite Army Divisions stationed in Moscow to fire ''live ammunition'' at the country's own parliament in order to avoid his own impeachment and dissolve the Supreme Soviet could definitely be thought of as not civilized. Of course, the Parliamentarians also shot back and arguably pushed the situation over into battle by not dissolving.
** And firing at the parliament was the least bloody part (few people will ever know whether there were anyone on the higher floors where the shots were aimed), fights around all Moscow before siege of parliament were the deadliest street fights in Moscow since 1917. Neither side was fully legitimate by the confrontation and neither side was civilized in the confrontation. So, whatever side was The Revolution, it was not civilized.
* The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
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* Both the IRA and the Ulster Defence Volunteers were playing this one straight from an early stage.
* During the Iranian Revolution in 1979, almost everyone from communists to religious fundamentalists worked together to overthrow the Shah. As soon as they won, control of the country boiled down to who had the largest number of organized thugs out on the streets. The Islamic socialists having lost their main leader, Ali Shariati, to a [[Secret Police|SAVAK]] assassin's bullet in England in 1978, they couldn't organize their thugs well enough to enforce their will, and fanatical Khomeinist Islamists won the day. The Khomeinists promptly purged the country shortly after they clinched power.
* A lesser known part of Japanese history: United Red Army and Japanese Red Army. URA was a domestic terrorist group, who ended up [[We ARE Struggling Together!|killing mostly its own members during a siege at a mountain hotel]]. JRA is mostly known for its affiliation with the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine.
* The [[Spanish Civil War]]. Full stop. While atrocities of Nationalist Spain and the supporting forces sent by Nazi Germany and Italy to fight against the Republic are well-known (especially as popularized by Picasso's Guernica) such as the bombing of Guernica by the [[Nazi Germany|German]] Condor Legion and the [[Fascist Italy|Italian]] Aviazione Legionaria along with the alarmingly casual views the Nationalists had on massacring those who had, or had been accused of collaborating with the Republicans, the Second Spanish Republic and its supporters were not angels themselves. The Republic's habits of violently enforcing its secular, anti-clerical policies (by destroying churches and murdering priests in particular) are generally not as well-known. George Orwell, who served in the International Brigades, commented in his works about how he found himself frightened of his own allies in the conflict. The late era of the Second Republic in particular was defined by an increasing move towards the Republic's biggest supporter: the Soviet Union with all the red terror that entailed. The Soviet [[State Sec|NKVD]] (the secret police and intelligence service, the predecessor of the KGB) in particular were busy little bees during the Spanish Civil War and provided their services as interrogators and counterespionage agents extensively for Republican Spain. Ultimately, a deeper study of the Spanish Civil War doesn't give a very clear case of "good guys and bad guys" as one would think.
* The Egyptian government attempted to [[Invoked Trope|invoke]] this during the Revolution of 2011, by withdrawing the police forces and opening the prisons, causing violence and havoc. The people weren't fooled: they formed local defense associations to fight back the criminals, and virtually all of the actual protesters calling for the downfall of the regime were entirely peaceful.
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[[Category:Politics Tropes]]
[[Category:The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized]]
[[Category:Trope]]
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