The standard approach of most European governments to the constant attacks coming from Elon Musk has been to ignore the online rants of the tech billionaire. French diplomats have decided to take a different approach.

In response to a tweet from Musk on his X platform asking why the UK government was “so fascist”, an official account run by the French foreign ministry hit back by posting a photo of Musk making what many said looked a lot like a Nazi salute at US president Donald Trump’s inauguration last year.

A post from the White House suggesting Greenlanders faced a choice between the United States or Russia and China drew a simple response from the French account: an emoji of the European Union’s flag.

The account is part of a new effort by the French government to be more combative on social media and push back against online disinformation.

The strategy has been to use humour and memes, turning around methods the far right and Trump’s Maga movement have traditionally employed successfully online. In effect, it trolls the trolls.

“If you want to win the information war you have to wage a battle,” says Pascal Confavreux, spokesman for the foreign ministry.

The idea was for the X account, French Response, to strike a witty tone and quickly respond to online attacks. “In the face of all the ones who are attacking our image, we have to up the volume,” Confavreux says.

The account is run by the ministry’s communications team. Its snappy posts defending Europe went viral during the crisis created by Trump’s threats to take over Greenland.

The foreign ministry has used the account to have a go at Musk, the Trump administration and former Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, but also influential US conspiracy theorists in the more unsavoury corners of the internet.

“Agreements can be exited. Scientific realities cannot,” the French account posted, in response to claims by the US state department that the international Paris climate agreement, intended to slow global warming, was undermining US energy security.

French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot is a big supporter of the online strategy.

“Information is provided through a frank approach with a touch of humour, mockery, sometimes self-mockery, that leads to it going viral on social media, which allows us to increase the impact of the message we want to send,” Barrot told a conference of ambassadors in Paris last month.

Omri Preiss, managing director of Alliance4Europe, a non-profit organisation set up to counter disinformation, says for too long European democratic governments have allowed populist and autocratic forces to dominate the online space. “This kind of response, with humour, it’s cheeky, it cuts through,” he says of the French account.

“A lot of the time the democratic side gets lost in policy, in detail, you need to have a law degree or have an international relations degree to understand what they are trying to say,” Preiss says.

The more confident tone on social media was “one additional string in our bow”, Confavreux says. French authorities are also mapping and publicly exposing pro-Kremlin networks of bot accounts, and websites posing as news outlets sowing discord.

François Godement, senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne think tank, says the communications were crafted to push back on behalf of Europe, rather than just France.

“My first thought when I saw the tweets was well done,” he says. “They have to manage it carefully,” he adds.

It is a certainty the EU-Mercosur trade deal will be weaponised by the far right and Russian disinformation networks, to attack centrist parties in the run-up to presidential elections in France next spring.

The free trade accord with the South American bloc was approved by a large majority of EU governments. France, Ireland, Poland, Austria and Hungary objected but were well outvoted.

The European Parliament has referred the deal to the EU courts, kicking to touch a decision by MEPs to ratify or reject it by up to two years.

That leaves the door open to the European Commission to apply the agreement provisionally in the meantime, something that would trigger intense backlash from beef farmers and other opponents. It is understood commission president Ursula von der Leyen, head of the EU’s executive branch, is minded to do so.

A skewed narrative about “Brussels bureaucrats” ploughing ahead and introducing the controversial trade deal, over the heads of MEPs, national governments and protesting farmers, will be a potent line of attack targeting the EU institutions and their supporters.

That ignores the fact MEPs ducked their chance to be counted on the trade deal by deferring to the courts and that the Mercosur agreement is backed by 21 of the 27 EU member states. You will need more than a quick, witty retort to argue that point on social media.