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.
What you need to know
The RN is trying to stand up. Mediapart published 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. “I challenge you to find a position that would be similar to a form of anti-Semitism,” he said before attacking Mediapart. Follow our live stream.
• 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. “The banks are all owned by Jews”; “The Jew must dominate [sic] 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 if the RN wins the presidential election, announced on CNews that his lawyer "has 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”.
• The Crif raises its 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.
#BARDELLA “They want to assassinate me politically,” declares Jordan Bardella in front of the National Assembly, the day after the Mediapart revelations. “I challenge you to find a position during my political career that would be akin to anti-Semitism,” also says the president of the RN, who claims to be supported by Marine Le Pen.
#BARDELLA The RN deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy accused at the microphone of LCI this morning "the anti-Semitic scum" purged by Marine Le Pen upon her arrival at the head of the National Front of having disclosed to Mediapart anti-Semitic messages from Jordan Bardella, the veracity of which he also denied. He denounced a “political force which unfortunately, at the beginning of the 2010s, was numerous, well organized like the Trotskyists and which was fought”.
#BARDELLA The political class continues to react to the anti-Semitic remarks attributed to Jordan Bardella by Mediapart. “The extreme right remains the extreme right,” denounced the Minister for Europe Benjamin Haddad, while Manuel Bompard (LFI) estimated that the president of the RN “should not play a major role” in the country if the writings are proven.
#BARDELLA Many politicians continue to react to anti-Semitic remarks attributed to Jordan Bardella. On franceinfo, Dominique de Villepin believes that “if these comments were made, they are unacceptable”. Jean-François Copé (LR), mayor of Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), judges that these writings "repeat all the clichés of anti-Semitism" while Thomas Ménage, deputy and spokesperson for the RN, denounced on France 2 a "set-up the day after the result in the senatorial elections", where the RN made a breakthrough. “Neither the Jordan Bardella of today nor the Jordan Bardella of ten years ago could have made these delusional comments.”
#BARDELLA “These comments are absolutely revolting and if they are accurate, they demonstrate that anti-Semitism is the DNA of the French extreme right,” denounces the coordinator of France Insoumise, Manuel Bompard, on France Inter. According to him, the president of the RN "should not play a major role" in the country if the writings are proven.
#BARDELLA “If we are repeatedly implicated, we will reveal the documents in our possession,” warns Antton Rouget, one of the authors of the investigation into the comments of Jordan Bardella, on franceinfo. “We are not the instrument of any settling of scores,” he also said.
#BARDELLA Asked about the anti-Semitic comments attributed by Mediapart to Jordan Bardella, Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad believes that "the extreme right remains the extreme right". “We know the history and roots of the National Rally, it is in no way a shield for the Jewish community,” the minister also explains.
#BARDELLA Laurent Jacobelli, vice-president of the RN group in the National Assembly, denounces on franceinfo "either a manipulation or a gross forgery" by Mediapart after the anti-Semitic remarks attributed to Jordan Bardella by the online investigative newspaper.
“Mediapart launches a damp squib, a bomb and then everyone talks about it,” continues Laurent Jacobelli, who believes that the online media investigation is a “campaign hijacking”, while Marine Le Pen is leading in the polls. The RN spokesperson, questioned about the comments of the Crif president referring to the RN as "the refuge party of identitarians", believes that his party is not anti-Semitic. “Yes, we will protect French people of Jewish faith in France (...) and we will be this rampart, whether Mediapart likes it or not.”
#BARDELLA “These comments are completely delusional. They are not mine,” defended the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, after the accusations of anti-Semitism made by Mediapart. The elected official announced a defamation complaint and also denounced a “sham operation”.
