Fresh allegations about Jordan Bardella’s teenage years have erupted into a new political row in France, after an investigative outlet claimed the far-right National Rally (RN) leader posted antisemitic remarks in private chats in 2013 — accusations he has denounced as fabricated.
The claims were published by Mediapart, which reported that Mr Bardella wrote, among other messages, in a chat: “The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so.”
Mr Bardella, 31, widely seen as a potential prime minister should Marine Le Pen win the presidency, said on X that he “formally” rejected what he called “crude forgeries” and announced he would pursue legal action against Mediapart.
Mediapart said its reporting centres on comments allegedly written by Mr Bardella during the summer of 2013, when he was 17 or 18-years-old, in private chat exchanges.
While Mediapart insisted it authenticated the purported messages, it did not say where the exchanges took place and did not publish screenshots.
At the time, Mr Bardella was an emerging activist who had joined the far-right party then known as the National Front (FN) about a year and a half earlier. Mediapart also attributed to him the line: “And that is what they want: a New World Order dominated by Israel, with Jerusalem as the capital, of course.”
Another message cited in the report alleged he wrote that “all the banks are owned by Jews”.
Ms Le Pen, speaking to reporters, said she believed the alleged comments were “fake” and accused Mediapart — a publication that has repeatedly clashed with the RN — of resorting to “dirty tricks”.
Far right ‘breakthrough’
Mr Bardella, known for a polished, social-media-forward style and a clean-cut public persona, has become central to Ms Le Pen’s long-running strategy of “de-demonisation” aimed at presenting the RN as a credible, electable governing party.
He and Ms Le Pen have both sought to distance the movement from the legacy of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the FN’s founder and former leader, who repeatedly made antisemitic remarks.
In 2025, Mr Bardella travelled to Israel in what was described as an unprecedented visit — the first by a French far-right leader — as part of an effort to underscore the RN’s attempt to rebrand.
The Mediapart report landed as Ms Le Pen’s position ahead of the 2027 presidential race appears more favourable than during her previous campaigns.
One new poll put Ms Le Pen in front in the first round to succeed President Emmanuel Macron and indicated she could defeat potential opponents in the decisive second-round run-off.
She also described as “historic” the RN’s performance in elections for the upper house Senate — a chamber selected by local officials — where it secured enough seats to form a faction for the first time.
Le Monde characterised the result as a “breakthrough” for the movement and a “warning” to rival parties.
Mr Bardella, for his part, accused what he termed an “activist media” of orchestrating a smear attempt “to destabilise the presidential campaign and attack my honour”.
The Toluna-Harris survey for RTL and M6 found that Ms Le Pen would take roughly 35-36% in the first round, scheduled for 18 April, if voting were held now.
Looking to the second round on 2 May, the poll suggested she would prevail in head-to-head match-ups against hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Melenchon or centrist frontrunner Edouard Philippe.
