PARIS—When French authorities raided X’s offices over alleged distribution of child sexual-abuse material, owner Elon Musk took to his account to call it “a political attack.”
Two hours later, French diplomats shot back on X, referencing Jeffrey Epstein: “Maybe that logic flies on some island. Doesn’t fly in France.”
Some of the sickest burns on the internet right now are coming out of the French Foreign Ministry.
For centuries, French has been the measured and mellifluous language of international diplomacy. Politicians here have so mastered the art of saying nothing that the technique has its own name: la langue de bois, or wood tongue.
But now a cadre of bureaucrats in Paris’s gilded Quai d’Orsay are ditching their carefully worded communiqués in favor of a stream of real-time X posts that mix self-mockery and sarcasm…in English.
Their X account is called French Response, and it was started in September as part of a broader French strategy to adopt a more combative tone. The goal: better defend the country in a multifront meme war.
Initially, French Response targeted its trolling largely at Russia, which French officials have long accused of deploying social media as a weapon to tear at France’s social fabric. But as trans-Atlantic tensions with the U.S. mounted over topics like tech regulation and President Trump’s desire to own Greenland, the account increasingly directed broadsides at Trump administration officials and MAGA allies.
“Breaking: Statue of Liberty reportedly spotted swimming back across the Atlantic. Said she ‘preferred the original terms and conditions,’” French Response replied in January to a pro-Trump account on X that had said France could be conquered “as an after thought” following a U.S. takeover of Greenland and Canada.
“#MakeAmericaGoodAgain please,” read another post from last month, with a picture of Abraham Lincoln.
On a Friday in late February when Sarah Rogers, U.S. undersecretary for public diplomacy, posted on X that the U.S. “will continue to watch” a case in France where a far-right activist was allegedly killed by people with ties to far-left groups, French Response replied with statistics suggesting the U.S.’s homicide rate is several times higher than France’s. “We will continue to watch this case,” French Response wrote.
The account has gotten widespread attention, in part for mixing its attacks with a soupçon of self-deprecation.
When Fox News host Laura Ingraham criticized French President Emmanuel Macron for urging a riposte to U.S. threats to take Greenland, French Response wrote, “Colonialism doesn’t work—trust us,” evoking France’s own checkered colonial past.
French Response grants itself no diplomatic immunity for stereotypes, either.
When a Russian commentator accused “panicked EU bureaucrats” of attacking X, the account reposted a meme video of two Italian DJs nonchalantly spinning 1990s-inflected electro while smoking cigarettes and drinking Campari on a sunny balcony.
“The French often have a reputation for being arrogant, particularly in diplomacy,” said François Heisbourg, a former senior French diplomat, who described the shift as clever. “This isn’t the house style.”
France has a history of political witticisms, or bons mots—literally “good words,” said Julien Nocetti, a research fellow at the French Institute of International Relations. This tradition, which emerged in the Parisian literary salons of the 17th and 18th centuries, is defined as the art of the witty remark.
“O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous,” Voltaire, the 18th-century French enlightenment philosopher, himself known for his bons mots, once wrote, adding: “God granted my prayer.”
The more recent inspiration for the account came from French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot. He decided France had to do a better job breaking through on social media when it came under criticism.
Responding to online attacks with a press release was, as a person close to France’s foreign ministry put it, “a bit like showing up to drinks with friends in a tuxedo.” Pascal Confavreux, a ministry spokesman, phrased it more diplomatically: “We use irony and humor to deliver a punch and create deterrence by exposing the absurdity of the claims made by those who attack us.”
Political voices from the U.S. to Europe have been injecting more humor and derision into their public messaging, an approach that some research suggests is more powerful.
“News is given with a frank posture, tinged with humor, derision, sometimes self-deprecation, which leads to virality on social networks, and increases the impact of our message,” Barrot said in a January speech to French diplomats where he urged them to adopt the French Response tone.
Nicolas Normand, a former French ambassador to several African nations, said the new initiative is still dwarfed by the waves of false and damaging online claims targeting France.
“It’s a drop in the ocean,” he said.
The team running the account comprises career diplomats, former journalists and online community managers who already worked at Quai’s press directorate. France’s foreign ministry declined to make them available for an interview, citing a risk of online harassment.
Marie-Doha Besancenot, a communications adviser in Barrot’s cabinet who previously led public diplomacy at NATO, plays a role supervising the account.
Musk, who has regularly attacked European regulations on social-media companies and investigations into X, is a frequent target. French Response has replied or quote-tweeted over a dozen Musk posts since late September.
In January, the billionaire retweeted an X post with stats showing U.K. prosecutions of social-media users and asked, “Why is the UK government so fascist?” French Response came to Britain’s defense with a viral photograph of Musk at a 2024 post-election rally.
That post, on Jan. 11, is French Response’s most viewed, with 8.3 million views. It helped propel the account from roughly 12,000 followers to more than 185,000 today. The foreign ministry says the account now receives roughly 35 million views a month.
Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com and Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com
