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Jordan Bardella is at the centre of a new controversy in France after an article published by Mediapart on Monday alleged that the president of the hard-right National Rally (RN) party had made antisemitic remarks early in his political career.
In the report, Mediapart alleged Bardella had made a number of antisemitic and conspiratorial comments in private conversations between 2013 and 2015.
Bardella celebrated his 18th birthday on 13 September 2013 and would go on to become the National Front’s departmental secretary in Seine-Saint-Denis a year later.
The investigative outlet said it had found further exchanges in which Bardella promoted conspiracy theories targeting Jewish political figures or people believed to be linked to Israel.
In one of the conversations, he is reported to have said: “The Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and one through and through.”
He is also reported to have stated: “And that is what they want: a New World Order dominated by Israel, with Jerusalem, of course, as its capital.”
When contacted prior to publication, Bardella, according to Mediapart, “formally” denied the allegations.
In a post on X, Bardella also called the allegations “blatant fabrications.”
“I formally refute the accusations levelled against me by Mediapart, which attribute to me delusional and antisemitic remarks that I allegedly made whilst I was a minor,” he wrote.
“At a time when the victory of our ideas has never been so close, certain militant sections of the press are prepared to orchestrate smear campaigns to destabilise the presidential campaign and undermine my reputation,” he continued, adding that he had instructed a lawyer to “take all necessary legal action against Mediapart.”
Marine Le Pen has come to the defence of her protégé.
Whilst visiting a construction trade fair in Paris on Monday, she was asked about the article, saying that she could not “believe such nonsense” and accusing Mediapart of resorting to “dirty tricks” and “smear campaigns.”
Edwy Plenel, a cofounder of Mediapart, said the article was the “result of an investigation lasting several months, based on dozens of written conversations – which we have been able to independently verify – drawn from a wider body of evidence, supplemented by witness accounts.”
The allegations come as Bardella has emerged as one of the RN’s leading figures and a close ally of Le Pen.
RN’s leadership has for several years been making efforts to distance the party from a legacy marked by antisemitic comments from its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen.