An investigation published by the French digital newspaper Mediapart accuses Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Regroupment (RN), of having made numerous anti-Semitic comments to various interlocutors, whose names the media has not revealed. The comments supposedly date back to approximately a decade ago, when Bardella was already active in what was then still called the National Front (FN) and was between 17 and 18 years old. Only a few months before becoming president of the Seine-Saint Denis section of the far-right formation.
The president of RN, a party that currently presents itself as a defender of the Jewish community in France, despite the fact that it was founded by collaborators of Nazism and former members of the SS, is accused, among other things, of having expressed conspiracy theories of an evident anti-Semitic nature. "The Jew must dominate other peoples, crush them and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily Jewish. In France, two good examples are BHL [writer Bernard-Henri Levi] or [economist Jacques] Attali. And that is what they want: a New World Order dominated by Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital," he allegedly stated.
The New World Order, which Bardella supposedly cited, is a conspiracy theory that attributes to the Jews the will to dominate the world and that has been spread by the anti-Semitic activist Alain Soral, convicted on several occasions. The founder of the Equality and Reconciliation (E&R) movement participated in Jean-Marie Le Pen's presidential campaign in 2007. However, officially, ties with the FN were broken in 2009. Regarding him, Bardella would have declared in 2013: "His analyzes are correct because everything is verified in the facts."
The then future president of the RN, as published by Mediapart, thus accumulated different conspiracy clichés, from theories about the attacks of September 11, 2001 to the possibility that Adolf Hitler had survived.
Mediapart does not specify in what format the comments were produced or the exact date. Only that they were supposedly recorded in writing and that they are verified with different sources. According to the documents consulted by the aforementioned media, Bardella would also have shared the statement, equally anti-Semitic, that “all the banks are in the hands of the Jews.”
Bardella responded in X that he formally rejects the accusations, describing the statements that the media attributes to him as “false.” According to his response, these would be “obvious falsehoods” spread by a “militant press” with the aim of destabilizing the presidential campaign and damaging his honor. Bardella also states that he has commissioned his lawyer to take legal action against Mediapart. Hours later he reiterated it in full prime time on the conservative television channel CNews. Marine Le Pen, his mentor, also came to his defense and declared that “no one can believe such madness.”
The RN has recently proclaimed itself a shield against anti-Semitism in France. Bardella, 31, has been presented for many years as the main face of the party's "de-diabolization" strategy. In March 2025, in fact, he became the first leader of this formation officially invited by the Israeli Government to travel to Jerusalem to participate in a conference on the fight against anti-Semitism.
Not so long ago, its founder, the late Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of the party's current candidate, Marine Le Pen, was racking up convictions for anti-Semitism. Le Pen founded the party together with collaborationists, neo-Nazis - such as Pierre Bousquet, former member of the German SS - and former terrorists from the OAS, the organization opposed to the French exit from Algeria that tried to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle (although today her daughter Marine repeatedly vindicates her).
The country's main political figures have already attacked Bardella. From the general secretary of the socialists, Olivier Faure, to the foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot. "To all those who have a short memory: anti-Semitism is not an accident along the way for the RN, it is the history of this party. This is the true face of the extreme right," he noted.
Bardella, who joined the FN due to the admiration he professed for its founder – in 2023 he considered that “he was not anti-Semitic” – would have pointed out in the alleged messages to certain personalities, such as Pierre Moscovici, then François Hollande's Minister of Economy, who would want to “save the companies” to “avenge Moses”. “The most important ministries fall to people for whom Israel and banking interests are above French interests,” he also wrote, according to the Mediapart investigation. Likewise, he supposedly showed his support for Dieudonné, the comedian who had already been convicted at that time for inciting hatred and who, according to statements reproduced by Mediapart, “carries out a real struggle of ideas.”
