124 Coming Out and Coming Together Diaspora organizations were also accused of being Brotherhood-run. As Hussam reported, the decision of a SAC founding member to exit the organization and start his own group raised accusations in the broader community. I hear from community members telling me that [this] person told people that [he] decided to quit the organization because it’s a Muslim Brotherhood organization. It’s easy to throw these accusations – completely baseless, by the way. I heard that even when I wanted to join. But I checked and I talked to people who are members and I talked to people who know them, [and] they said no. Some of them do have sympathies. Some of them are Christians, some of them are Alawites, some of them socialists. They were everybody. And in this case here, I was laughing. I said, “you know, did that person tell you [that he] was the president of the local [SAC] chapter? That person must be Brotherhood then, if that organization is Brotherhood!” But it’s easier to throw these things in the community because they resonate. Other groups were perceived to be Brotherhood-affiliated because they were comprised of the older generation of opposition activists, or because activists felt that their leadership style was too domineering or religiously oriented. Abdulaziz of London, for example, said that despite the fact that protests in London brought Brotherhood and non-Brotherhood members together, he stopped participating in them because [Their] style was mainly [supporting] the Muslim Brotherhood objectives. And we are not really happy with the ideology of Muslim Brotherhood, because [they] are in exile since the 1980s. And the people who started the Syrian revolution were the Syrian people inside [of the country]. So basically, we believed it is good to listen to the people from within Syria. We can work accordingly with what they want us to do. The Muslim Brotherhood didn’t really want that. They thought they are the only opposition party. They are organized, but they are this kind of dictatorship to some extent. Unfortunately, they are still living in the 1980s. Belal of California also emphasized that the assortment of various groups affiliated with the revolution inside and outside of the country raised a series of unanswerable questions that ultimately hindered solidarity among opposition sympathizers. “Unfortunately,” he stated, some groups are working under the radar. They’re attracting others and they’re organizing things, but we really don’t know who those groups are. Who do they represent? What are their intentions? There are religious groups, but then who are they? After the revolution, can I get along with these people? Are they really pro-democracy, or are they planning for their own agenda? Are they Muslim Brotherhood, are they Salafis, are they extremists? I don’t know. People are just jumping and joining groups, and [they] don’t know who they are. As Syrian activist and author Yassin al-Haj Saleh (2017: 122–23) argues, this “persistent infighting, which is most likely driven by attempts at selfpromotion; and the deeply mediocre standing of most opposition spokespersons, manifest in their lack of discipline and a clear, shared vision” contributed https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press