"Commie!" and Other Labels

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mohandas Gandhi

When people stand up against someone or something powerful, the response is often to try to make the people look bad. This is very likely if they actually do something successful, because they then become a threat to those in power.

It starts with name-calling. People in most nonviolent movements have been labeled “Communists.” For a long time in the 20th century, many people thought of Communists as being against freedom or even on the side of evil. If those in power could convince a lot of people that the ones opposing them were Communists, they thought they could keep others from supporting them.
Nonviolent resisters are also often called unpatriotic, dangerous, and unbalanced. They’ve been falsely accused of crimes and sometimes arrested, tried and imprisoned for things they didn’t do.