Investigation attributes antisemitic messages to French far-right leader Jordan Bardella

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🔍 WHY THIS STORY MATTERS
Jordan Bardella is central to the RN’s plans for power in 2027. Allegations involving antisemitic conspiracy theories challenge the party’s claim to have broken with the most toxic elements of its past.

KEY TAKEAWAYS...

● Investigative newspaper attributes antisemitic and conspiratorial private messages from 2013–15 to Jordan Bardella.

● Bardella categorically denies writing them and has filed a defamation complaint.

● Mediapart says material from several sources was cross-checked and technically verified, and says it has “not the shadow of a doubt” about authorship.

● Marine Le Pen has given Bardella her full backing as the RN prepares for the 2027 presidential election.

J ordan Bardella, the 31-year-old president of France’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN), is confronting allegations that strike at one of his party’s most important political claims: that today’s RN has broken with the antisemitism associated with its past.

Bardella is one of the two central figures in the RN’s plans for France’s 2027 presidential election. Marine Le Pen has presented him as the man she would appoint prime minister if she reaches the Élysée. He is also the younger leader who has helped give the party a more conventional public image as it attempts to broaden its electorate.

That is why an investigation published by Mediapart on 28 September poses such an uncomfortable challenge.

The investigative online newspaper attributes to Bardella a series of private messages from 2013 to 2015, beginning when he was 17 and a young member of the party then called the Front National (FN). The publication says its investigation took months and drew on dozens of written conversations, witness accounts and material that it says was independently authenticated.

The alleged exchanges contain explicit antisemitic conspiracy theories.

According to Mediapart, Bardella wrote: “All the banks are owned by Jews.”

In another conversation, Mediapart attributes to him the statement that “the Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and rob them”, followed by the assertion that “a Zionist is necessarily a Jew”.