State crackdown and emotional exhaustion followed activist peak moments

Evidence

The MPL had not had an easy year. In the first half of 2014, Mayara and many of her friends had felt off or anxious if not downright depressed. They felt that the government was closing in on protest and dissidents. In the run-up to the soccer, the Dilma administration had thrown its weight behind an ominous “antiterrorism law,” and was using existing legislation to crack down on many of the people Mayara knew from a decade in the streets. One by one, they began to be arrested for instances of direct action. Her Movimento Passe Livre group had experienced delirious highs in the days when they had unleashed a wave of protest on the streets and had floated on the crest for weeks afterward. They were welcomed and praised all over the city, and were greeted as heroes at small demonstrations in poor neighborhoods. The subsequent crash took them much lower than Mayara had imagined. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 530

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The high-and-crash emotional arc of mass protest participants—where post-peak repression and depression take activists lower than the movement’s start—is a genuinely paradigm-shifting reframe of what aftermath of protest feels like from the inside.
• XREF: connects to: Protest assemblies collapse once students and unemployed stalwarts exhaust their energy. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 264; Security-force killings of activists triggered escalatory cycles of mourning and reprisal — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 603; Emotional intensity rises then falls as deterrents increase. — Michael T. Schmitt, Daniel A. Miller, Nyla R. Branscombe, and Jack W. Brehm, The Difficulty of Making Reparations…, 26 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Emotional intensity rises then falls as deterrents increase. #corroborates (0.85) — Michael T. Schmitt, Daniel A. Miller, Nyla R. Branscombe, and Jack W. Brehm, The Difficulty of Making Reparations…, 26
• Security-force killings of activists triggered escalatory cycles of mourning and reprisal #expands (0.82) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 603
• Election-centered grassroots mobilization structurally demobilizes activists after winning #corroborates (0.78) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 617
• Heavy-handed state intervention and stigmatization deepen rather than halt radicalization #complicates (0.76) — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America, 579
• Political movements must seize fleeting protest moments or lose them to ruling patience #complicates (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1508
• Civic effort targets feelings of futility more than its causes #expands (0.74) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 285