The Trump administration has dismantled a number of U.S. government defenses against foreign disinformation campaigns. But the French government has been doubling down on its efforts to call out foreign propaganda efforts.
Some American conservatives believed the Biden administration tried to undermine, or even silence, Republican voices by falsely labeling conservative arguments as being pushed by Russia or another foreign power.
French officials said governments can call out malign influence campaigns at the same time as they protect speech, and they are trying to make the case with the public.
“Fighting disinformation is a topic that we’ve invested a lot in recent years,” said Eléonore Caroit, a senior official in the French foreign ministry, whose responsibilities include overseeing international partnerships and working on the disinformation issue. “It has become clear now that this is one of the major threats that we’re facing in terms of national security sovereignty.”
During the Biden administration, the United States and France collaborated closely, calling out Russian attempts to undermine the Paris Olympics last year. But the Trump administration rapidly began dismantling the parts of the government that warned the public about foreign campaigns, eliminating the F.B.I. team and shrinking an intelligence community center that tracked efforts by adversarial countries to manipulate U.S. elections.
The French government has continued to call out false or exaggerated reports that it believes are pushed by foreign governments. French officials have suggested Russia was behind pigs’ heads placed near mosques in the Paris area, in an attempt to cause unrest.
Ms. Caroit said the incident was amplified on social media by foreign powers.
“It was done purposely so that people would react and think that it was some sort of Islamic attack, or some sort of anti-Muslim attack,” she said. “So there really is a manipulation of fact.”
Ms. Caroit, who visited the United Nations last week for talks on this issue and others, acknowledged the newly divergent French and U.S. approaches. But she insisted that allies could disagree, and where America was taking things apart on this issue, France would invest in new defenses.
“With your friends and allies, you’re able to say where you disagree or take a different approach,” she said. “Climate is one of them, gender is another. Perhaps the importance of fighting disinformation is another. We’re not judging or commenting on it, but we just have a slightly different approach.”
Still, the French government faces the same debates over foreign malign influence that have taken place in the United States. French far-right parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, have echoed the arguments of Republicans in the United States that efforts to call out foreign propaganda are really efforts to silence populist or conservative voices. (Ms. Le Pen has been a longstanding critic of France’s 2018 “fake news” law, arguing it was repressive and led to indirect censorship.)
French officials have argued that they are not suppressing any speech and just want French citizens to understand the difference between fact and opinion and make sure the origin of information is clear.
“We’re not preventing anyone from stating an opinion, but we just want to ensure that people know the source of the information that they’re getting,” Ms. Caroit said.
In a polarized world, the goal of arguing for common facts and diverging opinions seems increasingly difficult.
While France banned the Kremlin-supported Russia Today and Sputnik news outlets, much of the country’s more recent efforts have been focused on media literacy and debunking narratives spread by Russia and other countries.
This fall, the French foreign ministry began a program, called “French Response,” in which the ministry and its diplomats more aggressively call out disinformation and foreign influence campaigns.
Equally important, Ms. Caroit said, are efforts in elementary schools to help children become better at determining the origin of information, especially because most of them do not read traditional news sources.
“Today, 70 percent of our youth are using social networks for their primary, if not only, source of information,” she said.
Many of the foreign malign attacks France has fought have been from Russia, but multiple countries have tried to either sow dissent in France or influence the public debate. Defending the information space, Ms. Caroit said, is “at the very core of democracy.”
“It has an impact on elections,” she said. “It has an impact on how citizens see their institutions, trust their representatives, and it is of the utmost importance in particular for younger generations.”
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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