Coming Out and Coming Together 95 uprising – led diaspora members to take a principled stand in spite of the potential risks of coming out. As many in the United States and Britain came to believe that it would be shameful to hide their views to protect themselves or their families when protesters and innocent civilians were being slaughtered, their objects of obligation (Moss 2016b: 493) expanded from kin to the national community writ large. Third, activists decided to go public after deducing that the risks and costs of activism had been reduced. They did so after observing that the regimes seemed incapable of making good on their threats against the diaspora while waging a full-scale war for survival at home. The Arab Spring also broke down the normative operation and effects of conflict transmission, albeit for different durations across national groups in the United States and Britain. After regime violence unified political groups and factions in the home-country, I find that previously fractured conationals followed suit and came together to support their compatriots. While activists did not always join the same group or organization, they came to engage in a common tactical repertoire to facilitate rebellion and relief (which I discuss at length in Chapter 5) and rallied around the anti-regime revolutionary struggle. Thus, the formation of revolutionary coalitions at home against a common enemy, which Beissinger (2013) calls “negative coalitions,” was transmitted abroad through members’ ties. This led regime opponents to forge new diaspora movements and coalitions. At the same time, the emergence of diaspora movements against authoritarianism was not a linear, uniform process. While Libyans came out rapidly in public and reported a strong degree of solidarity for the duration of the revolution in both host-countries, Syrians and Yemenis residing across the United States and Britain faced challenges due to persistent fears of transnational repression and resurgent conflict transmission. Because the Syrian regime remained relatively intact during the revolution’s escalation, transnational repression continued to pose a threat to the diaspora during the first years of the revolution. As a result, anti-regime diaspora members only gradually joined the public pro-Arab Spring movement, with many guarding their identities and voices throughout the revolution’s early stages. As the Syrian revolution became plagued by infighting, mistrust, and competition, diaspora activists too became subjected to conflict transmission and began to splinter apart once again. Meanwhile, Yemenis did not have to overcome the hurdles posed by transnational repression because the regime was too weak to effectively repress voice after exit. Accordingly, regime violence and the outrage it caused were sufficient to motivate anti-regime individuals to come out against the regime. However, it was only after revolutionary coalitions formed at home that they overcame conflict transmission and formed new protest movements abroad. Obstacles to maintaining a unified voice for regime change reemerged, however, after regime violence prompted northern elites in Yemen to defect to the revolution. This move irked southern separatist supporters at home and abroad – the diaspora’s https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press