Anti-Semitic writings attributed to Jordan Bardella: the RN denounces a “total war” and announces a counterattack

Mediapart published on Monday anti-Semitic messages dating from 2013 attributed to the current president of the RN. He announced that he had filed a complaint for defamation.

The RN is trying to stand up. Mediapart published, on Monday September 28, anti-Semitic messages dating from 2013 attributed to Jordan Bardella, then a young National Front activist. “They want to assassinate me politically,” the president of the National Rally denounced to the press on Tuesday, September 29, denouncing “the beginnings of a total war” against his party. “We are not going to let this happen,” added Marine Le Pen, who announced that she wanted to “counter-attack” in the face of information from the online media.

Justice seized after “remarks which resemble death threats”. In this press briefing, Marine Le Pen declared: "Jordan said it: we, he and I, put on our Kevlar suits, eh, because there, it's heavy that falls." “So now, it’s Mediapart, I think, who will have to be told to put on their Kevlar suits, because there will obviously be a response to the way they behave,” she added. However, Kevlar is used for personal protective clothing, such as bulletproof vests. MP Léa Balage El Mariky, spokesperson for the environmental group, announced that she would refer the matter to the public prosecutor through article 40 "for these comments which resemble death threats".

Anti-Semitic remarks recorded in writing. This investigation lasting several months is based on private conversations, which Mediapart claims to have been able to authenticate, which were allegedly written by Jordan Bardella in the summer of 2013, when he was between 17 and 18 years old. These exchanges, of which the newspaper does not specify the recipient(s), transcribe several anti-Semitic comments, choosing to keep the spelling errors. “The banks are all owned by Jews”; “The Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and steal from them, a Zionist is necessarily Jewish, and deeply,” the future president of the RN would have written.

A complaint filed. Jordan Bardella, expected to become Prime Minister of Marine Le Pen in the event of the RN's victory in the presidential election, announced on CNews that his lawyer had "filed a defamation complaint". “Everything will be done (…) to destabilize the campaign” of the National Rally and “demolish it politically”, he added, estimating that “either Mediapart is at the head of this operation, or Mediapart itself is being manipulated by people who have an interest in it”.

Crif raises his voice. “It is an illustration of the limits of the demonization of the National Rally,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, told AFP. This party “has never been part of the Republican arc and will never be part of it,” Licra also commented.