This article outlines considerations on the exercise of democracy and citizenship in Brazil based on bans on the use of masks and other means of covering one's identity during public demonstrations. These bans, a response of the State to the acts that occurred from the "June days" of 2013, associate the use of masks in the midst of such protests with the actions of "vandalism" through anonymity. We seek to address the limits to the effectiveness of law and justice focusing on the effects of the ban on civil rights and citizens' behavior, analyzing the subversive positions of the protesters and the consequences of the curtailment of freedoms on the eve of the 2014 and 2016 "mega-events" in the city of Rio de Janeiro. We contrast this ban to the subsequent mandatory use of masks for personal protection during the Coronavirus pandemic. Attentive both to the violence of the protests and to the violence that occurs against citizens on a daily basis, through public institutions such as the police and the ineffectiveness of laws in the face of justice, we conclude by outlining criticism of how the management of the right produces effects of subjectivity production, highlighting elements that help in the (re)construction of discourses that enable other modes of insertion in the plots of current society.
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