104 Coming Out and Coming Together she remained standoffish and seemed unconvinced. Another woman who was listening to the conversation turned to me and explained in a Syrian accent, “We’re not afraid for ourselves, but for our families.” British Syrians also reported that the presence of outsiders at their events raised serious concerns. Ayman, a doctor who had been living in Manchester since the 1980s, recalled that public events did not start in his city until “late 2011” and that he was “very afraid” to participate because “I have elderly parents in Syria and I don’t want them to be harassed, and we know that people have been.” The countermobilization of pro-regime groups meant that just because revolution sympathizers were out demonstrating in public did not mean that they necessarily felt free to be identified as revolution supporters. These fears led some activists to engage in what I call “guarded advocacy” by covering their faces during protests, posting anonymously online or not at all, and refusing invitations to speak to the media in order to avoid being identified as pro-revolution. Sarab, for example, first helped activists in New York organize from behind the scenes “because I hadn’t gotten approval from my family to be public.” The guarded character of activism also meant that public events took on a semi-private character. For example, despite declarations by a speaker that “the wall of fear has come down!” at a SACLA community meeting in December 2011, I was explicitly instructed not to photograph the audience. Persistent concerns about infiltration also led activists who went public early on to be suspected as agents provocateurs. Susan of Southern California, who had gotten permission from her father in Syria to come out, recalled that “people were like, why is she doing this if her family is home? Why is she not scared for them? Reality was, I was scared to death.” In this way, respondents reported that their mobilization efforts suffered from enduring suspicion between conationals. As Rafif from the DC area recalled, Many people used pseudonyms for a very long time. Other people would sort of mask their faces or something so they wouldn’t be recognized on camera. So people took their pace, whatever they were comfortable with, in terms of coming out publicly in support of the revolution. That also created some mistrust, right? [Because it raised questions as to] why is one guy completely out there and not afraid, and then somebody else is still protecting his identity? Mistrust in the community also created a challenge for Syrian organizers, because early supporters of the revolution could not get significant numbers of sympathizers in their communities to sign their names on petitions, join organizations like SAC, or affiliate with public calls for regime change. This was a problem because organizers wanted to combat regime propaganda that slandered the revolution as a conspiracy of foreign powers and a terrorist plot. As Said Mujatahid, one of the early SAC organizers, recalled, because of the “phobia in the Syrian community to say anything against the Syrian regime, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press