Je Suis Nico

About

Je Suis Nico (I Am Nico in English with Nico being diminutive of Nicolas) is a hashtag and exploitable image of former French president and current UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy trying to sneak his way towards the front of the January 11th rally that took place in Paris, France, in order to pay tribute to the victims of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo Shooting. Because his action was seen as out of place and rude by news outlets and French netizens, he triggered a series of parodies online portraying him crashing into a wide variety of settings, from historical events to tv shows and movies in a manner similar to Sarkozy was there.

Origin

On January 11th 2015, an official silent rally was organized in Paris in homage to the Charlie Hebdo victims and to protest against terrorism as a whole. It was led by French president François Hollande and featured many important foreign politicians, a few examples being German Chancellor Angela Merkel or even Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photos of the event were taken by news magazine Paris Match^[1] in which they noticed that former president Nicolas Sarkozy made his way to the front of the rally (shown below) before giving his place when the whole rally stopped and observed one minute of silence in memory of the victims.

Spread

The photograph reached Twitter that same day in an update by news site l’Important^[2]. From then on, the hashtag #JeSuisNico came to light, following the popularity of Je Suis Charlie, leading to dozens of amateur parodies involving Nicolas Sarkozy inviting himself into various settings, historical or fictionnal. A Tumblr page was created as well, on January 12th^[3].
The parodies eventually caught the attention of various news websites reporting on it, such as Minute Buzz^[4], Le Nouvel Obs^[5] or even 20 Minutes^[6].