January 10, 2026, was just another Saturday for Elon Musk. “Why is the UK government so fascist?” asked the far-right billionaire in yet another inflammatory tweet on his social network X.
The next day, an account with just 37,000 followers put him in his place with a single archival photo: the same Musk, appearing to make a Nazi salute on January 20, 2025.
The biting response went viral, with 7.5 million views on Musk’s own platform. The X account that had delivered the scathing comeback was French Response, which has a unique trait: It is officially run by the French Foreign Ministry.
The ministry has made no secret of its approach: It has openly chosen to step into the fray. French Response was created as a countermeasure, “to push back against foreign interference and disinformation,” a diplomatic source explained.
The initiative was launched in September 2025. “In this predatory world, if we are weak, we appear as prey. To be free, we must be feared,” Anne-Marie Descôtes, secretary general of the ministry, explained at the time. She presented this new face of French diplomacy online as “one more weapon to counter arguments undermining our positions,” in the face of disinformation from the Kremlin, Israel or Trump-aligned circles.
People will do anything except the only thing that will actually work - stop using Twitter.