For five years, the #SaccageParis movement has denounced on social networks Anne Hidalgo's management of cleanliness, placing this theme dear to the right and the far right at the heart of the 2026 municipal campaign. Rachida Dati (Les Républicains) and Sarah Knafo (Reconquête) have adopted the codes. The Battle for Paris, episode 2.

Published on: 02/08/2026 - 5:34 p.m.

Paris, a capital that has become unhealthy because of the left? This is the idea that the promoters of the hashtag #SaccageParis have managed to make viral on social networks in recent years. Targeting Anne Hidalgo's management for five years, this movement has made the cleanliness of Paris one of the main campaign themes in the capital.

Guest of the TF1 morning show on January 16, the socialist Emmanuel Grégoire, former first deputy of Anne Hidalgo, had to answer a question relating to the cleanliness and the record of the outgoing mayor.

Also read: The battle for Paris: a ballot more open than ever

"Of course there are failures, there are always failures. We never do things perfectly. (...) I think that in terms of maintenance of public spaces, cleanliness, we can still improve things", was forced to recognize the candidate, who is well aware that his political adversaries have long used the criticism of #SaccageParis to their advantage.

This is the strength of this movement that was born online in March 2021 and went viral in a few weeks thanks to the joint forces of ordinary citizens.

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"There had been critics of Anne Hidalgo for a long time who each tweeted in their own corner. But the Twitter account (which has since become citizen.

Thousands of tweets were published in spring 2021. They denounced the "ugliness of Paris", its "generalized state of disrepair" or even the "fouling" of the city. To the point of being taken up by the opposition during the Easter weekend 2021, like Rachida Dati who then evoked “overwhelming images” on Twitter, affirming that “it is time for Ms. Hidalgo and her allies to open their eyes to the decline of Paris”, or even Marine Le Pen, although far from the debates of the Paris Council, who affirms that “the thousands of images shared with the hashtag #SaccageParis break the hearts of Paris lovers”.

“The impact of the movement was quite rapid”

The Paris town hall quickly understood that it had a problem and immediately published a response defending the work of its cleanliness agents. But within Anne Hidalgo's team, #SaccageParis publications are now being scrutinized.

"The impact of the movement was quite rapid in helping to change the decisions taken on new developments in the city. For example, the Mikado bench was abandoned in favor of a return of the Davioud bench, which is emblematic of Parisian furniture. And when we read the 'Manifesto for a new Parisian aesthetic' published by the City of Paris in the summer of 2021, it is difficult not to see the influence of the action of #SaccageParis", says Antoine Sander.

Even if the movement remains relatively unknown to the majority of Parisians, it has partly structured the campaign themes of the right and the extreme right, which use its elements of language.

"The left ransacked the Place de la République. With your money! Millions wasted on an immense slab of concrete which is deteriorating day by day and which makes it the largest heat island in Paris!", could we read on an Instagram video by Rachida Dati (Les Républicains) published on January 28 and in which she appears on this square in eastern Paris.

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Cleanliness has also become the first campaign theme of the Minister of Culture and mayor of the 7th arrondissement. "I will make Paris clean 24/7. As soon as I arrive, I will reorganize services, create rapid intervention brigades and have incivility punished by the municipal police. We will modernize our equipment and carry out an ambitious plan against rats. Cleanliness is the dignity of Paris and your quality of life", we can read in particular on his campaign website.

From cleanliness to insecurity

Another video, published on December 15, shows her strolling and talking with traders and residents of the Château Rouge district, in the 18th arrondissement, deploring the state of the streets and the increase in incivility. “The street is crowded, it’s dirty and there is a hygiene problem,” she asserts, before adding “insecurity” to the list of problems a few seconds later.

However, the initiators of the hashtag do not have a monopoly on it. The account

And when Rachida Dati plays on the unspoken by evoking hygiene and insecurity in a neighborhood characterized by a strong presence of African immigrants, Sarah Knafo's supporters do not bother with such subtleties, the majority of their publications deploring the presence of foreigners.

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"The #SaccageParis movement is clearly structured by an imagination and themes linked to the right and it has, from the start, been driven by a tension between its founders who are more center-right and another part of the movement which is far-right. The @SaccageParis account has always been denounced by the founding accounts, but they cannot prohibit the use of the hashtag. This is the whole problem of a nebulous movement which can bring together a lot of people but which is not structured and cannot define an official line", analyzes Antoine Sander.

One thing is certain, #SaccageParis does not benefit the left. But the latter, who prefers to focus her campaign on access to housing or health, can nevertheless be reassured: before Anne Hidalgo, and even if social networks did not yet exist or had less importance, Bertrand Delanoë (mayor from 2001 to 2014), Jean Tiberi (mayor from 1995 to 2001) and Jacques Chirac (mayor from 1977 to 1995) had they too suffered similar attacks.

In Paris, candidates are Pierre-Yves Bournazel (Horizons), Blandine Chauvel (New Anticapitalist Party - Revolutionaries), Sophia Chikirou (La France insoumise), Rachida Dati (Les Républicains), Emmanuel Grégoire (Socialist Party), Sarah Knafo (Reconquête), Thierry Mariani (National Rally), Mahel Pierot-Guimbaud (Workers' Party) and Marielle Saulnier (Workers' Struggle).

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