Jordan Bardella has described as “delusional” accusations that he railed against Jews at the start of his political career. The 31-year-old president of the National Rally appeared on television on Monday evening and declared the allegations were part of a left-wing wing plot to “destabilize” his party.
Bardella will try and ride out the storm in the belief that most of the electorate will believe him and not the left-wing media
In an article published on Monday morning, Mediapart alleged that Bardella had made numerous anti-Semitic remarks when he first joined the National Rally (the National Front as it was at the time). Mediapart claims it has seen dozens of private message sent by Bardella on a social media platform between 2013 and 2015, and several disparaged the Jews. It cited one in which Bardella allegedly declared that “all the banks are owned by Jews.”
Bardella responded to the allegations by going on the counter-offensive. Announcing that he has filed a defamation lawsuit against Mediapart, he then went on the airwaves. Appearing on CNews – France’s Fox News – Bardella said Mediapart had embarked on a “smear campaign” against him and his party.
The left-wing Mediapart has a history of investigative scoops. One of the best known was in 2012, when it published a memo claiming to be from Libyan secret service. The memo was referred to an “agreement in principle” to finance Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign. This revelation led to the investigation into the former president that led to his brief imprisonment last year. During the trial, however, the court ruled that “it appears probable that this memo is a forgery.”
Asked to elaborate on his claim of a smear campaign against him and his party, Bardella said: “Either Mediapart is behind it, and [since] it’s based on nothing, that’s extremely serious; or Mediapart is being misled by people who have a stake in this destabilization operation, and that’s even more serious.”
Bardella’s political opponents seized on the allegations. The foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot took to social median to warn: “To all those with short memories: anti-Semitism is not a mere blip for the National Rally; it is the very history of this party. This is the true face of the far right.” The leader of the Green party, Marine Tondelier, called on Bardella to resign.
He won’t. He will try and ride out the storm in the belief that most of the electorate will believe him and not the left-wing media. Nonetheless, the allegations will embarrass Bardella, who has dedicated himself to courting the French bourgeoisie.
On Saturday he made sure he was photographed attending the mass held by the Pope in Paris. On the same day his girlfriend, Princess Maria Carolina de Bourbon des Deux-Siciles, opened her heart to the French press for the first time.
In a lengthy interview with Le Figaro, whose readers are just the sort of people Bardella wants to win over, Princess Maria declared that her beau is “obsessed with the future of France and with the French people.”
It is the other woman in Bardella’s life, his political mentor Marine Le Pen, who remains the strong favorite in the presidential race. A poll published on Monday morning confirmed she is on course to win regardless of whom she faces in the second round run-off.
It appears increasingly likely that will be Jean-Luc Melenchon of the far-left La France Insoumise. The party have regularly been accused of anti-Semitism in recent years. Next month one of the rising stars of the party, Rima Hassan, will appear in court charged with apology for terrorism. The charge relates to a tweet she sent (since deleted) in which she referred to Kōzō Okamoto, who carried out a terrorist attack in Israel in 1972. (Hassan claims her positions on armed struggle “have always been clear and based on international law” and says her tweet was not referring to the terrorist attack.)
A choice between Le Pen and Melenchon would be the nightmare scenario for many of France’s Jews. Is it any wonder most of them no longer feel safe in their own country?
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