Paid protester

Paid protesters or professional protesters are people who participate in public outrage or objection in exchange for payment. The expression may be directed against individuals, organizations and governments or against protests against the government with the aim of breaking up or discrediting a protest. In some contexts, people may be hired for optics to show increased public participation in the democratic process. Two parliaments have debated paid protesting, the Kyrgyz parliament and the Indian parliament, and allegations without evidence were frequently made by the President of the United States Donald Trump and his supporters throughout his presidency.

The larger the crowd, the less likely is it that they entirely consist of professional or paid protesters. Paid protesters may not be aware of the matter in consideration. Similar terms that have been used to refer to similar concepts include paid protest, rent-a-crowd, rent-a-mob, activists-for-hire, protest-on-hire, fake protesters/ fake protests and mercenaries.

Conspiracy theories about paid or professional protesters and coordinated protests by groups like antifa and "global elites" (i.e. George Soros conspiracies or QAnon) were common throughout the presidency of Donald Trump, and both right-leaning and left-leaning misinformation circles promote allegations of paid or otherwise organized protesters.