Consensus-based protest groups deliberately suppress individual prominence to preserve collective identity.

Evidence

Their meetings would last hours, because everything had to be decided by consensus. After school or work, or on the weekends, Mayara sat around with Lucas “Vegetable” Monteiro, Pedro Punk, law student Nina Cappello, rocker Daniel Guimarães, the feisty Elisa “Tinkerbell” Quadros, and twenty or thirty other members. Many of them attended the city’s prestigious (and free) University of São Paulo (USP), but they had long ago decided, as a group, to refuse to share biographical details with anyone in the press. They didn’t want attention on individuals, as they didn’t want anyone elevated above the rest of the group. It was exciting, to plan for the struggle, but it wasn’t easy. Meetings could run until two or three in the morning, even when they started before noon. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 358

Categorization

• QUESTION: How did the no-personality media strategy hold up once the movement went national and Mayara became a public face?
• XREF: connects to: Groups tolerate dissent unless it threatens identity-defining core beliefs — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1407; Political movements require private indignation to coalesce into collective identity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 20; Movement leaders suppress internal critiques to protect unity — Silke Roth, Intersectionality and coalitions in…, 151 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Movement leaders suppress internal critiques to protect unity #exemplifies (0.85) — Silke Roth, Intersectionality and coalitions in…, 151
• A strategic essentialist identity can silence the very groups it unites #complicates (0.76) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 248
• Groups tolerate dissent unless it threatens identity-defining core beliefs #expands (0.75) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1407
• Low cohesion or threat makes groups rigid against minority dissent #complicates (0.74) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1412
• Totalizing critiques of identity threaten marginalized groups who name identity to resist domination #complicates (0.73) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 162
• Political movements require private indignation to coalesce into collective identity #qualifies (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 20
• Activists suppress their systemic political analyses when speaking publicly. #qualifies (0.72) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 88