Le Pen faces fallout after Bardella accused of antisemitic remarks

Por Marion Solletty, Victor Goury-Laffont, Clea Caulcutt — POLITICOPolitics » POLITICO

PARIS — Jordan Bardella was meant to be the young, telegenic face of the far-right National Rally’s effort to clean up a reputation once stained by antisemitism and xenophobia. But instead of helping propel Marine Le Pen to the presidency next year, the 31-year-old might have just become her biggest liability.

Bardella, the president of the National Rally and leader of the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament, finds himself on the defensive after investigative outlet Mediapart published a story Monday alleging that he expressed antisemitic views in private conversations with fellow National Rally members in 2013, when he was 17.

The far-right leader vigorously denied allegations that he said “the Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and rob them” and “all banks are held by the Jews,” adding that he was suing Mediapart. Both he and Le Pen framed the story as part of a broader concerted effort to prevent the far-right veteran, who is currently topping the polls, from winning the election next year.

“The system will do anything — including the most disgusting things — to try to hinder this momentum,” Le Pen said Tuesday, sitting next to Bardella as they addressed reporters in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.

“We sense the early signs of total war, attempts at destabilizing the presidential campaign,” Bardella said. 

Yet the allegations themselves are rattling Le Pen’s campaign given her years-long effort to distance her party from its antisemitic past. The National Rally’s predecessor, the National Front, was founded by Nazi collaborators and Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, who was repeatedly convicted of hate speech. Le Pen kicked her father out of the party in 2015 for repeating his claim that the Holocaust was a “detail” of history.

The fallout of this latest scandal could be particularly damaging given how Le Pen jumpstarted Bardella’s career and put him at the forefront of a detoxification effort.

Too young to have been involved with the party’s old guard, Bardella was supposed to be a fresh face that could help the party make inroads in parts of the electorate where the Le Pen name carried too much baggage — notably with older voters and in the Jewish community. 

Since taking the reins of the National Rally in 2021, Bardella has sold the party as a defender of France’s Jewish population and pointed to his full-throated support of Israel as proof. The 31-year-old traveled to Israel in 2025 after receiving an invite from the Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli.

Former Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti, a longtime opponent of the far right, said Mediapart’s reporting shows that “efforts to detoxify the party were actually a cover-up operation.”

“The masks will come off,” he said.

“Very serious” allegations 

In one alleged exchange reported by Mediapart, Bardella said that top ministerial posts “go to people for whom Israel and banking interests take precedence over French interests,” allegedly targeting finance ministers Laurent Fabius, Pierre Moscovici and Manuel Valls. 

“They will have to demonstrate that all of this is false,” Moscovici told POLITICO, adding that it would otherwise be “a very serious matter.”

“If the details made public prove to be true, the antisemitism of the remarks attributed to Jordan Bardella deals a crushing blow to the National Rally’s strategy of shedding its toxic image,” Yonathan Arfi, head of CRIF, an umbrella group of French Jewish organizations, said on X.

The problem for the National Rally is that despite repeated pressure to clean up its ranks, the French press has regularly unearthed antisemitic or racist comments during election cycles from party candidates vying for public office.

National Rally critics have long argued the party hasn’t distanced itself from its most toxic intellectual influences.

According to Mediapart’s report, Bardella looked up to Alain Soral, a prominent far-right conspiracy theorist convicted multiple times for hate speech and denying the Holocaust. Mediapart reported that Bardella wrote in 2013 that Soral was “right” on “France’s submission to a Zionist logic.”

Asked about ties to Soral in an interview Monday with leading conservative channel CNews, Bardella didn’t directly answer the question.

“Don’t you think that if there had been any close ties, friendships or encounters with controversial figures, it would have been reported [before]?” he said.

Dupond-Moretti, the former justice minister, who just authored a book on the National Rally’s alleged connections, said the party’s problematic relations have long been established, citing Le Pen’s past ties to Soral, who campaigned for the far-right party in the early 2000s.

Le Pen has previously said she cut all ties with Soral after learning of his “unacceptable” positions.

Leaking ship

The very existence of the Mediapart report is cause for concern for the National Rally’s leading duo, whose relationship has been tense since a surprise court ruling in July cleared a path for Le Pen to run for the presidency. Bardella, who had been his party’s “Plan B” candidate, has visibly struggled to fall back in line behind his boss as he had to revert back to being her number one supporter. 

“This wasn’t the work of political opponents,” said Gaspard Gantzer, a political communications consultant close to former President François Hollande, hinting at the source for the leak, which draws on internal chats. “That means there is internal score-settling going on … and that doesn’t bode well for them.” 

According to two senior officials close to her, Le Pen and her inner circle were unaware of the ongoing journalistic investigation. “I hadn’t heard a thing about it,” one of them told POLITICO. 

The candidate appeared to be caught off guard when questioned on the subject on the sidelines of the construction trade fair Monday. Visibly annoyed and using strong language, she denounced it as “madness” and “pure folly,” insisting she did not believe it “at all.” 

Le Pen has said Bardella would be her prime minister if she was elected, but speculation was already rife within the party as to whether the National Rally’s current ticket will hold before the news broke. 

“If I were Jordan Bardella, I wouldn’t feel very secure right now,” said Gantzer. 

Fonte: POLITICOPolitics » POLITICO