National Rally Leader Jordan Bardella Denies Mediapart Report of Antisemitic Messages

Investigative outlet Mediapart alleges that private messages from 2013 to 2015 show National Rally leader Jordan Bardella making antisemitic and conspiratorial remarks, including claims about Jewish control of banks and a world order dominated by Israel. Mediapart says it authenticated the messages and consulted former party colleagues. Bardella calls the messages fabrications and says he will pursue legal action; Marine Le Pen has dismissed the report as a dirty trick. The allegations renew scrutiny of the RN’s efforts to shed its racist and antisemitic image as Le Pen’s prospects in the 2027 presidential election strengthen. Bardella, a prominent figure in that rebranding and a potential prime minister if Le Pen wins, has previously sought to demonstrate the party’s changed stance, including through a visit to Israel.
Mediapart also attributed to Bardella the message: “The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so.”
The alleged messages date to summer 2013, when Bardella was 17 or 18; he had joined the National Front about a year and a half earlier, according to Mediapart’s account.
Bardella was the RN’s de facto presidential candidate until July, when an appeals court cleared Marine Le Pen to run for president.
A poll reported on Monday put Le Pen first in the following April’s first-round vote and projected her beating both left-wing and centrist candidates in a May runoff.
A series of antisemitic, Islamophobic and racist comments by RN candidates had already undermined the party’s hopes of winning a parliamentary majority in France’s legislative vote.
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