The revelation that National Assembly party leader Jordan Bardella, as a 17- and 18-year-old, sent a series of private messages with grossly anti-Semitic content has shaken the political class in France, with six months to go until the next presidential election.
Bardella is Marine Le Pen's first choice as prime minister, and according to the information he is said to have written, among other things: "All banks are controlled by the Jews" and "The Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and plunder them".
The quote is from 2013, but according to the newspaper Mediapart, Bardella's entire political thinking was imbued with anti-Semitism at this time. By then he had been active in the National Assembly for about a year and in 2015 he was elected as a member of the party in the Paris region of the Île-de-France regional assembly.
Mediapart is respected for its investigative journalism in France and its journalists are said to have worked for months on the expose.
- We would not put the newspaper's reputation at risk with such sensitive information, if we were not 200 percent sure that it is true, says Fabrice Arfi, who is head of the excavation section at Mediapart, to French radio.
He promises more publications with more detailed information about where and how Bardella conveyed his views. But the newspaper is also careful to protect its sources.
Bardella categorically denies that he wrote the messages and has now reported Mediapart for defamation.
For right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen, the data is troubling. She has spent 15 years trying to "normalize" the National Assembly and wash away the stigma of anti-Semitism that her father Jean-Marie Le Pen left behind.
Now she is the favorite to win next year's presidential election - and likes to portray herself as an ally to the Jewish minority in France.
But instead of taking the revelation seriously, she attacks Mediapart.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Le Pen said, coldly smiling:
- Now I think it is time for Mediapart to put on the kevlar vest. Because of course there will be a reaction to the way they behave.
Kevlar is a material used in bulletproof vests.
Le Pen also said at the press conference that she and Jordan Bardella had put on their own "Kevlar vests", probably in a metaphorical sense.
- Because now heavy bombs are falling, claimed Le Pen.
Despite that, many have interpreted the statement as a more or less veiled threat against Mediapart. A member of the Greens has reported Marine Le Pen to the police for death threats. The newspaper itself says that the statement illustrates Le Pen's view on freedom of the press, and the organization Reporters without Borders sharply criticizes the presidential candidate's "physical threats".
"Challenging information in court is a right in France, but shamelessly defaming and making veiled threats do not belong here," writes Reporters Without Borders in a statement.
For Le Pen, the disclosure is also troubling for another reason: that it risks exposing phalanx battles within her own party. Bardella has long been the given crown prince, but now Le Pen's niece Marion Maréchal has returned to the party - and she is seen internally as a rival to Bardella, according to the newspaper Libération.
Did the leak come from her part of the party? Questions of that type are already being asked - while the party leadership officially denies that the information is true.
A new newspaper within the media empire of the radical right-wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré, L'Infiltré, goes so far as to launch a "hunt for the mole" - that is, the source or sources that provided information to both Libération and Mediapart.
From Emmanuel Macron and the ruling center coalition, it is noticeably quiet. Maybe because you want to wait for more detailed information.
But in the left-wing opposition, the reactions are strong. De Gröna's presidential candidate Marine Tondelier demands Bardella's resignation and left-wing candidate François Ruffin recalls that the National Assembly was founded in 1972 by fascists and at least one former officer in the Nazi Waffen-SS.
Radical leftist France, whose presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has sometimes been accused of flirting with anti-Semitic ideology, is also calling for Bardella to step down.
- The extreme right will always be the extreme right. No PR agency or facade change can change that, says party spokesperson Manuel Bompard.
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