The comments were allegedly made mostly in 2013, when Bardella was 17 and shortly after he had joined the National Rally, whose presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is the front-runner in next year’s election.
“At a time when the victory of our ideas has never been so close, a certain activist press is ready to orchestrate smear operations to destabilize the presidential campaign and attack my honor,” Bardella said.
During a visit to a construction industry event Monday, Le Pen called the Mediapart report “insanity.”
The National Rally’s predecessor, the National Front, was founded in part by Nazi collaborators. Le Pen’s father and predecessor as party chief, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was repeatedly convicted of hate speech for downplaying the Holocaust.
Marine Le Pen has spent years trying to rid her party of its most extreme elements and absolve it from accusations of antisemitism since taking over in 2011, going as far as expelling her father in 2015.
In 2023, Bardella sparked controversy by denying that Jean-Marie Le Pen was an antisemite, before correcting himself a few days later.