What effects do a government’s rhetorical insults against protesters have on their mobilization? How do protesters’ peaceful uses of satire as a tool of opposition shape the dynamics of contestation against governments wielding violence? During the height of the nation-wide, anti-government demonstrations known as Turkey’s Gezi Protests in the summer of 2013, a protester in Ankara carried a banner proclaiming “No stone, no stick! Our goal is liberty!” This and thousands of other banners’ sentiments simultaneously denounced the brutal police crackdown that led to several deaths and thousands of serious injuries, and objected to the government’s demeaning characterization of peaceful protesters as looters, hooligans, and terrorists. Thousands more banners displayed clever humor deftly criticizing brutal crackdowns on demonstrators, such as “Help police! Hmm, guess you’re busy…” While many studies of the Gezi Protests mention the witty satire rife throughout demonstrators’ posters, graffiti, and social media posts making fun of the violence they witnessed, they treat humor as epiphenomenal to the protest dynamics. Similarly, studies criticizing the government’s rhetorical efforts to delegitimize protesters and thus defend the use of violence against them do not examine the constitutive effects these insults had on mobilization during the demonstrations. Rather than focus on the “sticks and stones” of violence, this paper analyzes the substantive and substantial impacts of words on protest mobilization and government response. Using intertextual analysis and process-tracing, I examine written, spoken, and symbolic texts of participants in the Gezi Protests and government officials in Turkey from June to August 2013. I trace the content of the language used by protesters and government officials as well as the timing and scope of demonstrations and government crackdowns. In doing so, I develop a psychological theory of protest escalation that captures the constitutive effects of satire and insult, to explain the timing and rhetorical content of protesters’ mobilization and the government’s counter-mobilization.