How France’s Yellow Vests Are Plotting Online
- Protesters convene and organize tactics on Facebook, Twitter
- Online activists become leaders around which strikers gather
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Sporting a baseball cap turned backward, he’s blowing cigarette smoke into the camera and eating potato chips as 13,000 people watch on: the Yellow Vests protesters know him as “Fly Rider.”
The day after a wave of violence last weekend left Paris cleaning up burnt cars and broken glass in posh districts, protesters from the grassroots Yellow Vests movement quickly convened to debrief and define future tactics. Their venue: a Facebook group run by 31-year-old Maxime Nicolle. Posting with the alias “Fly Rider,” he’s become an Internet star in just a couple of weeks and risen as a prominent face of the French strikes.