Under a blue sky, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo took a dip in the Seine this week to applause from hundreds of onlookers, many of whom had worked on the years-long project to clean up the river for Olympic swimming events.
The stunt made worldwide headlines with just days to go before the opening of the games, boosting the already high international profile of the 65-year-old green crusader who has been mayor since 2014. She was re-elected to a second term in 2020.
Yet before Hidalgo’s long-promised swim, a social media campaign spread under the hashtag #jechiedanslaseine (“I poop in the Seine”) with people pledging to defecate to express their dislike for the mayor and her politics. “They have put us in the shit, so now it’s up to them to swim in our shit,” read a dedicated website.