Le Pen
faces fallout after Bardella accused of antisemitic remarks
The
National Rally president vigorously denies the allegations, which is rattling
Le Pen’s presidential campaign.
Jordan
Bardella addresses the media next to Marine Le Pen at the Hôtel de Matignon in
Paris, on Sept. 2, 2025. | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images
September
29, 2026 4:07 pm CET
By Marion Solletty, Victor
Goury-Laffont and Clea
Caulcutt
https://www.politico.eu/article/le-pen-faces-fallout-after-bardella-accused-of-antisemitic-remarks/
PARIS —
Jordan Bardella was meant to be the young, telegenic face of the far-right
National Rally’s effort to clean up a reputation once stained by antisemitism
and xenophobia. But instead of helping propel Marine Le Pen to the presidency
next year, the 31-year-old might have just become her biggest liability.
Bardella,
the president of the National Rally and leader of the Patriots for Europe group
in the European Parliament, finds himself on the defensive after investigative
outlet Mediapart published a story
Monday alleging that he expressed antisemitic views in private conversations
with fellow National Rally members in 2013, when he was 17.
The
far-right leader vigorously denied allegations that he said “the Jew must
dominate other peoples, crush them and rob them” and “all banks are held by the
Jews,” adding that he was suing Mediapart. Both he and Le Pen framed the story
as part of a broader concerted effort to prevent the far-right veteran, who is
currently topping the polls, from winning the election next year.
“The
system will do anything — including the most disgusting things — to try to
hinder this momentum,” Le Pen said Tuesday, sitting next to Bardella as they
addressed reporters in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of
parliament.
“We sense
the early signs of total war, attempts at destabilizing the presidential
campaign,” Bardella said.
Yet the
allegations themselves are rattling Le Pen’s campaign given her years-long
effort to distance her party from its antisemitic past. The National Rally’s
predecessor, the National Front, was founded by Nazi collaborators and Le Pen’s
father Jean-Marie, who was repeatedly convicted of hate speech. Le Pen kicked
her father out of the party in
2015 for repeating his claim that the Holocaust was a “detail” of history.
The
fallout of this latest scandal could be particularly damaging given how Le Pen
jumpstarted Bardella’s career and put him at the forefront of a detoxification
effort.
Too young
to have been involved with the party’s old guard, Bardella was supposed to be a
fresh face that could help the party make inroads in parts of the electorate
where the Le Pen name carried too much baggage — notably with older voters and
in the Jewish community.
Since
taking the reins of the National Rally in 2021, Bardella has sold the party as a defender of France’s
Jewish population and pointed to his full-throated support of Israel as proof.
The 31-year-old traveled to Israel in 2025 after receiving an invite from the
Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli.
Former
Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti, a longtime opponent of the far right,
said Mediapart’s reporting shows that “efforts to detoxify the party were
actually a cover-up operation.”
“The
masks will come off,” he said.
“Very
serious” allegations
In one
alleged exchange reported by Mediapart, Bardella said that top ministerial
posts “go to people for whom Israel and banking interests take precedence over
French interests,” allegedly targeting finance ministers Laurent Fabius, Pierre
Moscovici and Manuel Valls.
“They
will have to demonstrate that all of this is false,” Moscovici told POLITICO,
adding that it would otherwise be “a very serious matter.”
“If the
details made public prove to be true, the antisemitism of the remarks
attributed to Jordan Bardella deals a crushing blow to the National Rally’s
strategy of shedding its toxic image,” Yonathan Arfi, head of CRIF, an umbrella
group of French Jewish organizations, said
on X.
The
problem for the National Rally is that despite repeated pressure to clean up
its ranks, the French press has regularly unearthed antisemitic or racist
comments during election cycles from party candidates vying for public office.
National
Rally critics have long argued the party hasn’t distanced itself from its most
toxic intellectual influences.
According
to Mediapart’s report, Bardella looked up to Alain Soral, a prominent far-right
conspiracy theorist convicted multiple times for hate speech and denying the
Holocaust. Mediapart reported that Bardella wrote in 2013 that Soral was
“right” on “France’s submission to a Zionist logic.”
Asked
about ties to Soral in an interview Monday with leading conservative channel
CNews, Bardella didn’t directly answer the question.
“Don’t
you think that if there had been any close ties, friendships or encounters with
controversial figures, it would have been reported [before]?” he said.
Dupond-Moretti,
the former justice minister, who just authored a book on the National Rally’s alleged connections, said
the party’s problematic relations have long been established, citing Le Pen’s
past ties to Soral, who campaigned for the far-right party in the early 2000s.
Le Pen
has previously said she cut all ties with Soral after learning of his
“unacceptable” positions.
Leaking
ship
The very
existence of the Mediapart report is cause for concern for the National Rally’s
leading duo, whose relationship has been tense since a surprise court ruling in
July cleared a path for Le Pen to run for the presidency. Bardella, who had
been his party’s “Plan B” candidate, has visibly struggled
to fall back in line behind his boss as he had to revert back to being her
number one supporter.
“This
wasn’t the work of political opponents,” said Gaspard Gantzer, a political
communications consultant close to former President François Hollande, hinting
at the source for the leak, which draws on internal chats. “That means there is
internal score-settling going on … and that doesn’t bode well for them.”
According
to two senior officials close to her, Le Pen and her inner circle were
unaware of the ongoing journalistic investigation. “I hadn’t heard a thing
about it,” one of them told
POLITICO.
The
candidate appeared to be caught off guard when questioned on the subject on the
sidelines of the construction trade fair Monday. Visibly annoyed and using
strong language, she denounced it as “madness” and “pure folly,” insisting she
did not believe it “at all.”
Le Pen
has said Bardella would be her prime minister if she was elected, but
speculation was already rife within the party as to whether the National
Rally’s current ticket will hold before the news broke.
“If I
were Jordan Bardella, I wouldn’t feel very secure right now,” said
Gantzer.
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