French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, her National Rally party and its allies rallied Tuesday behind her partner in next year’s presidential race, Jordan Bardella, following media reports alleging that he made antisemitic remarks when he was a young party member.
Bardella, 31, is a rising star of France’s hard right. Le Pen has said that if she wins the presidential election in May next year — an election in which polls predict a historic victory for her — she will appoint him prime minister.
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Jordan Bardella. 'These remarks are completely absurd. They are not mine'
(Photo: Photo/Jean-Francois Badias, File)
But investigative website Mediapart published a report Monday citing allegedly antisemitic statements written by Bardella in the summer of 2013, when he was 17. Among other things, he allegedly wrote that “the banks are all owned by Jews,” “the Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and rob them” and “a Zionist is necessarily Jewish, inherently and profoundly.”
According to Mediapart, the statements came from Bardella’s private correspondence, though it did not say whether the messages were sent by email or through another medium. The website said it had independently authenticated the correspondence but did not explain how it obtained it.
According to Mediapart, Bardella wrote the remarks about a year and a half after joining the National Front, the far-right party founded by Marine Le Pen’s father, nationalist and Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen. Marine Le Pen later took control of the party and, following further antisemitic remarks by her father, led efforts to expel him. She then embarked on an extensive campaign to distance the party from his legacy and rehabilitate its image, an effort that became known as the “de-demonization” strategy.
Bardella with Le Pen at the launch of her French presidential campaign. 'This is only the beginning of attempts to destabilize our campaign'
(Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier)
Through those efforts, Marine Le Pen has turned the National Rally into France’s largest political force. Her party now has the largest bloc in the National Assembly, with 119 lawmakers. A poll published Monday indicated that she would comfortably defeat all her rivals in the presidential election next April and May. In the first round, the poll showed her finishing first with about 36% of the vote, followed by far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon with about 18%. In a second-round runoff, the poll showed Le Pen defeating Mélenchon 69%-31%.
If center-right candidate and former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, currently polling in third place in the first round, were to overtake Mélenchon and advance to the runoff, the poll showed Le Pen defeating him 57%-43%.
Le Pen, it should be recalled, learned only recently that she would be able to run for president after an appeals court reduced her sentence in a corruption case in which she was convicted, including shortening a five-year ban on holding public office. While Le Pen awaited the ruling on her appeal, Bardella, her protégé, waited in the wings. Had the original ban remained in place, he would have replaced her as the party’s presidential candidate. Since she was cleared to run, Le Pen’s campaign has proceeded without significant setbacks, and the Mediapart report marks its first major obstacle.
Le Pen: 'I have complete confidence'; Bardella: 'This is all-out war'
Allegations of antisemitism are particularly sensitive for Le Pen and the National Rally because, to reach the Élysée Palace, she must overcome the obstacles that blocked her path in her three previous presidential campaigns, including perceptions that her party has antisemitic roots.
In recent years, the National Rally has courted Jewish voters, portraying itself as a bulwark against Islamist extremism in France and emphasizing Le Pen’s sustained efforts to distance herself from her father’s legacy and combat antisemitism. Bardella himself, who serves as president of the National Rally, last year became the first leader of the far-right party to be invited by the Israeli government to visit Israel for a conference on combating antisemitism organized by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli.
Bardella at Chikli’s International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem. The first National Rally leader invited by the Israeli government
(Photo: Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
Yonathan Arfi, president of onseil Représentatif des Institutions (CRIF), the umbrella organization representing French Jewish institutions, said that if the statements attributed to Bardella prove authentic, they would amount to a “stinging repudiation” of the party’s effort to rehabilitate its image.
“How is it possible that a political figure who made such repugnant antisemitic remarks could subsequently rise to such senior positions of responsibility within a party that claims it has changed and that it fights hatred of Jews?” Arfi wrote on X.
Bardella has strongly denied writing the statements attributed to him and said he has begun pursuing a defamation lawsuit against Mediapart. He described the allegations as a “dirty tricks operation” and said: “These remarks are completely absurd. They are not mine.”
Marine Le Pen. 'Our opponents will do anything, including the dirtiest tricks, to try to stop our momentum'
(Photo: Bertrand GUAY / AFP)
Senior National Rally figures presented a united front Tuesday and rallied to Bardella’s defense. At a meeting of the party’s parliamentary group, Le Pen, Bardella and their ally Éric Ciotti sat side by side and described the Mediapart allegations as the opening salvo in an effort to damage the National Rally and Le Pen ahead of the presidential election.
“This is the beginning of an all-out war, of attempts to destabilize the presidential campaign, attempts that, I tell you, will be directed against us one after another,” Bardella said.
Le Pen expressed “complete confidence” in Bardella, who enjoys considerable popularity among young voters and has a massive following on social media. Addressing those she said were plotting campaigns to undermine her party, she said, “We will not let them do it.”
“Know that we will take heavy blows, that the system will do everything and our opponents will do whatever it takes — including the dirtiest tricks imaginable — to try to stop this momentum,” Le Pen said, promising that the National Rally would establish “who is behind this manipulation.”
Left condemns remarks: 'No cosmetic makeover will change the far right'
Mediapart, which specializes in investigative journalism, has become a leading French news outlet since its launch in 2008 and boasts more than a quarter of a million subscribers. The investigative website has exposed a series of major political scandals in recent years, including allegations that Libya financed former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign and former Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac’s undeclared Swiss bank account.
Far-left leader Mélenchon. 'Absurd conspiracy theories'
(Photo: REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch)
The investigation into Bardella has also reverberated across France over the past 24 hours, prompting a series of condemnations, including from presidential candidates.
“The far right will always remain the far right. No PR firm and no cosmetic facelift will ever change that,” said Raphaël Glucksmann, a candidate in the social democratic primary. Marine Tondelier, leader of the Greens, known as The Ecologists, demanded that Bardella immediately resign from all his positions.
Radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a staunchly anti-Israel candidate who has himself faced accusations of antisemitism, including over his refusal to describe Hamas as a terrorist organization or its actions on October 7 as a “massacre,” also “unequivocally” condemned the statements attributed to Bardella.
He said they were “steeped in conspiracy theories and absurd antisemitism of the most ludicrous kind, if he was indeed the one who made them.”