“I formally reject your claims that I made, whether in public or in private, orally or in writing, any racist or antisemitic remarks of this type,” declared French far-right leader Jordan Bardella in response to a report by media outlet Mediapart saying that he made antisemitic comments at the start of his political career.
Bardella is President of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, who is leading in the polls ahead of next year’s presidential election.
“This is madness,” said Marine Le Pen, when asked about the matter by journalists.
According to Mediapart, Bardella wrote anti-Semitic comments on private chats in 2013 when he was aged 17 or 18.
31-year-old Bardella, who is considered as a likely Prime Minister if Marine Le Pen wins next year’s presidential election, said he would take legal action over the claims which he called “blatant falsehoods”.
According to Mediapart, Bardella wrote, among other comments, in a chat: “The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so.”
He also allegedly said: “And that is what they want: a New World Order dominated by Israel, with Jerusalem as the capital, of course.”
Bardella and Marine Le Pen have moved over the last years to try to get rid of the legacy of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen who founded and led the National Front and repeatedly made anti-Semitic remarks.
Last year, Bardella was the first French far-right leader to visit Israel in a bid to prove the National Rally’s new credentials.
In Jerusalem, he took part in a conference on fighting antisemitism organized by an Israeli minister and later visited the site of the Nova festival massacre.
Observers noted that the allegations against Bardella have been published at a time when opinion polls give Marine Le Pen the most chances of winning the presidential election in 2027.
A new poll Monday showed that Le Pen would not only be way ahead in the first round of voting in the presidential elections to succeed President Emmanuel Macron, but was also on course to easily win the Élysée in the second against any potential opponent.
Jewish group reaction
“Like everyone else, I am stunned by the virulence of the anti-Semitic remarks attributed to Jordan Bardella, which even his youth cannot possibly explain,” said Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, the representative group of French Jewish institutions, who believes that the National Rally’s DNA ‘’has not fundamentally changed.’’ “If these posts are authentic, it seems inconceivable to me that party leaders were unaware of them,” said Arfi.
When asked about the “de-demonization” strategy pursued by Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, the CRIF president said he had always been “skeptical.” “In my view, you can’t claim to fight anti-Semitism on the one hand while continuing to serve as a refuge for identitarians of all kinds—especially those who espouse anti-Semitic rhetoric,” stated Yonathan Arfi.