Jordan Bardella, the president of France's Rassemblement National, has denied allegations published by investigative website Mediapart claiming he wrote antisemitic messages in 2013.
The French investigative portal published a report on Monday alleging that Bardella sent messages containing explicit antisemitic statements when he was a young activist in the Front National party.
Bardella formally contested the report in a statement sent to the news outlet, describing the accusations as gross fabrications intended to damage his reputation and destabilize his party.
According to Mediapart, the written messages dating back to 2013 included statements asserting that Jewish people must dominate, crush and rob other peoples, and claiming that a Zionist is necessarily Jewish deep down.
Response from Jordan Bardella
In an email response to Mediapart, Bardella stated that he formally denied ever expressing racist or antisemitic views of this nature in public or in private, whether orally or in writing.
Writing on the social media platform X, the European Parliament member emphasized that during the summer of 2013 he was still a minor and was not an active militant within Front National, arguing that these facts demonstrated the untruthful nature of the sources used in the report.
Bardella also claimed on X that with the prospect of electoral victory closer than ever for his political movement, activist media outlets were conducting undercover political operations to disrupt the presidential campaign and attack his honor.
He added that he had instructed his legal team to initiate all necessary legal proceedings against Mediapart over the publication of the article.
Defence from Marine Le Pen
Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement National candidate for the 2027 French presidential election, publicly defended Bardella during an appearance in Paris on Monday.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a construction industry trade show in Paris, Le Pen said that the allegations appeared so wild that they could only be a fabrication or a political maneuver of the kind she claimed Mediapart frequently conducts.
Political Context and Background
Jordan Bardella assumed the presidency of Rassemblement National after Marine Le Pen stepped down from party leadership to focus on leading its parliamentary group and pursuing national presidential campaigns. Born in 1995, Bardella rose rapidly through party ranks and was elected to the European Parliament in 2019 before taking over the leadership of the movement.
Rassemblement National was previously known as Front National, a political party established in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen. Under Marine Le Pen and Bardella, the party rebranded in 2018 as part of a broader strategy to expand its political appeal across France and distance itself from historical controversies regarding extreme right-wing ideology and antisemitic rhetoric.
Mediapart is an independent, subscription-based French online news organization founded in 2008 by former journalists from Le Monde. The investigative site is known in France for publishing high-profile investigative reports on political figures, government affairs and financial matters.
Legal proceedings initiated by Bardella's attorneys are set to move forward in response to the publication, as political debate surrounding the claims continues in France.
