Mediapart accuses Jordan Bardella of having uttered anti-Semitic phrases

“All the banks are owned by Jews.” "The Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and rob them, a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and deep down." These are just some of the sentences that, according to Mediapart, were uttered by the president of Rassemblement National Jordan Bardella. In an investigation published on September 28, the independent French online magazine, which deals with investigations and opinions, disclosed various anti-Semitic phrases attributed to the president of the far-right party, uttered in private conversations between 2013 and 2015. In that period, the MEP, now 31 years old, was in the early stages of his political career which in a short time made him one of the main French politicians as well as the party president among the favorites in the presidential elections next year.

The investigation into Bardella

The words published by Mediapart were said by Bardella when he was just eighteen years old, in the year before becoming departmental secretary of the Front national in Seine-Saint-Denis. The investigative site claimed to have found exchanges in which the young militant developed conspiracy theories that specifically target political figures who are Jewish or believed to be linked to Israel.

In one of these conversations, Bardella reportedly declared: "The Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and rob them, a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and deep down." He would also say: "And that's what they want, a New World Order dominated by Israel, with of course Jerusalem as the capital."

The defense of the Rassemblement National politician

As reported by Mediapart, Jordan Bardella was informed of the news before its publication and "formally" disputed the accusations. In a written response to the newspaper, he said he had never made, "in public or private, orally or in writing", racist or anti-Semitic statements of this type. The 31-year-old described the evidence against him as grossly false, adding on X that "a certain militant press is ready to support underground operations to destabilize the presidential campaign and attack my honor."

Even the leader of Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, among the most likely to succeed Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée from 2027, said she could not "believe this madness" and accused Mediapart of resorting to "dirty tricks". In his opinion, the elements published are false.

The co-founder of the newspaper, former director of Le Monde, Edwy Plenel responded that what was published by Mediapart is the result of a months-long investigation into written conversations, a work of cross-referencing and identification that made it possible to achieve this result.