Antisemitism Accusations Against Rightist Rising Star, Jordan Bardella, Roil France’s Presidential Contest

“If these remarks prove accurate, he will have to resign.” This is how Julien Aubert, the vice-chairman of Les Républicains, France’s conservative party, commented on “the Bardella case” — the antisemitism accusations brought Monday against the president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, Jordan Bardella.According to a leftwing investigative organization, Mediapart, Mr. Bardella penned in 2013 — at the age of 17 and shortly after joining the party that was known then as the National Front — anti-Semitic texts: something he flatly denies. Mediapart, founded by Edwy Pleynel, a one-time Trotskyite and a former editor at Le Monde, France’s liberal newspaper, has not published these documents so far, raising doubts about their actual existence, but claims nonetheless that their content echoes ideas put forward at the same time by the neo-Nazi polemicist Alain Soral.The leader of the left-wing ecologist party, Marine Tondellier, concurred with Mr. Aubert: “Bardella must resign from all his positions,” she said. Manuel Bompard, of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s ultra-left party La France Insoumise, opined that “he must draw from this all the necessary conclusions.” To say the least, such a convergence between the mainstream right and the far left is unusual in French politics.National Rally leader Marine Le Pen arrives at court at Paris on July 7, 2026. AP/Michel Euler“Clearly, I am facing a character assassination attempt,” Mr. Bardella observed. “This is the first step of a total war against the National Rally.” The National Rally is under heavy attack because it stands a real chance to win the 2027 presidential election in France, scheduled for April 18 and May 2. According to the latest available poll, a Toluna/Harris survey for RTL and M6 released Monday, the Rally’s candidate, Madame Le Pen, would garner 57 percent of the vote against 43 percent for her centrist rival Edouard Philippe, or alternatively 69 percent of the vote against 31 percent for the Ultra Left candidate, Mr. Mélenchon.Such returns would amount to a revolution. They would signal the near end of the traditional conservative and right-of-centre parties and allow Madame Le Pen to call referendums: either to restore “French sovereignty,” reduce immigration, break the left’s cultural hegemony, or curb the ultra-left’s repeated calls to rebellion and street violence.Mr. Bardella is a key element in this process, owing to his youth — he is only 31 — and to the fact that he has never so far come across as nostalgic for the Third Reich or the Vichy regime, but rather as an heir to Charles de Gaulle’s democratic nationalism. President De Gaulle during his interview with French TV reporter Michel Droit on June 7, 1968. AP/Jean-Jacques LevyWhen questions arose over Madame Le Pen’s eligibility (in connection with cases of illegal party financing), Mr. Bardella was tipped to run in her place and was polling on a par with her. Should the party win in 2027, it appears to be a foregone conclusion that Madame Le Pen would appoint him prime minister.Things might be different, however, if Mr. Bardella’s “Mr. Clean” image is tarnished, especially in such matters as antisemitism. Or so do the Rally’s opponents think. The National Front was founded in 1972 and was led until by 2011 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, an avowed antisemite. Jean-Marie’s daughter and successor, Marine Le Pen, resolved however to remove antisemitism or right-wing extremism from its platform and narrative. In 2015, Jean-Marie Le Pen was expelled from the party. In 2018, a new name — the National Rally — was coined. The leader of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, and the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, on June 2, 2024 at Paris. AP/Thomas Padilla, fileMr. Bardella, then 16 years old, joined the party’s youth branch at the very moment Marine Le Pen was undertaking such drastic change — and, he says, “because of her.” He grew up as an individual and as a political figure, from teenager to young adult, and from grassroot activist to party leader, as the product of an increasingly reconstructed party. This may be the main reason why Madame Le Pen secured his rapid political accession, until he succeeded her in 2022 as party president, at the age of 27. According to a National Rally member of the National Assembly, Laurent Jacobelli, it is hard to believe that Mr. Bardella could have made the comments Mediapart ascribes to him. “On the contrary,” he says, Mr. Bardella has been at the forefront of the fight against antisemitism within the National Rally. A young conservative member of parliament, Charles Alloncle, who recently drew attention for setting up a parliamentary inquiry into public broadcasting, likewise dismisses the accusations against Mr. Bardella as “grotesque” and “ridiculous.”In 2025, Mr. Bardella was a guest of honor at a conference on antisemitism held at Jerusalem at the invitation of the Israeli government, something that implied a measure of prior screening. After meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, he delivered a forceful speech in which he said that the National Rally had adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which treats the anti-Zionist demonization of Israel as itself a form of antisemitism, and solemnly pledged “to fight all forms of antisemitism, whether right-wing, left-wing or Islamic, everywhere, always and at all times.”Another dimension must be mentioned. Ahead of the French presidential election of 2027, general elections will take place soon in Israel and in the United States. Some interaction is bound to take place between them. Charges of antisemitism against Mr. Bardella may be used in the Israeli ballot against the Netanyahu administration that befriended him. As for America and France, where the right tends to be philosemitic or pro-Israel and the left as antisemitic or anti-Israel, anything that can blur the lines globally will help the left globally.

Antisemitism Accusations Against Rightist Rising Star, Jordan Bardella, Roil France’s Presidential Contest

Antisemitism Accusations Against Rightist Rising Star, Jordan Bardella, Roil France’s Presidential Contest

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