Hendra Wijaya
Jordan Bardella, the president of France's far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, or RN), has issued a forceful denial of allegations that he sent anti-Semitic messages roughly a decade ago, calling the claims fabricated and politically motivated. The denial, posted on social media on Monday, came in response to a report published by the investigative outlet Mediapart, and it landed just one day after the RN celebrated a record result in French Senate elections, a pairing of events that has thrust the party's internal discipline and public image back into the national spotlight.
In his statement, Bardella said he "formally disputed" the accusations, describing them as "deranged and anti-Semitic remarks" that he supposedly made while still a minor. He insisted the messages were "obviously blatant forgeries," rejecting Mediapart's reporting in its entirety. The 31-year-old has built his public career on presenting a modernized, more palatable face for a party long associated with racism and anti-Semitism, making the allegations particularly sensitive for his political project.
Mediapart's report, according to the outlet, is based on a review of dozens of private messages exchanged between 2013 and 2015, which the publication says reveal a pattern of anti-Semitic rhetoric. Among the messages cited is one in which Bardella allegedly wrote that "all the banks are owned by Jews." Another quoted message states: "The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so." Mediapart said it independently authenticated the private messages and also relied on testimony from former party colleagues to corroborate its findings.
Bardella told the right-wing French outlet CNews that his record on the issue is unambiguous. "Since I began engaging in politics, I have never had any ambiguity about the fight against anti-Semitism and was received by the Israeli government in 2025," he said. The reference to a 2025 visit to Israel reflects a deliberate and long-running effort by the RN to reposition itself as a firm ally of the Jewish state, a strategy intended to draw a sharp line between the party's present leadership and the overtly anti-Semitic statements that marked its earlier decades.
Beyond his denial, Bardella framed the report as part of a wider campaign against his party. He accused the "activist press" of orchestrating "smear operations" designed to "destabilise" the RN's presidential campaign, arguing that the timing reflects panic over the party's rising fortunes. He added that "the victory of our ideas has never been so close," and said he had instructed his lawyer to pursue "all necessary proceedings" in response to the allegations.
Marine Le Pen, the RN's dominant figure and a presidential frontrunner, quickly amplified that line of defense. She said the report could "only be a fake, a manipulation, a dirty trick," and stated that she expected Bardella to file a defamation lawsuit imminently. Le Pen has spent years working to scrub the party's racist image and has emphasized building closer ties with Israel and its supporters, making the allegations a direct challenge to the credibility of that rebranding effort.
The timing of the controversy is significant. The report emerged shortly after the RN secured a record 14 seats in the Senate, a result that confirmed the party's strong prospects ahead of presidential elections early next year. The Senate is traditionally a stronghold of the French establishment, so the RN's breakthrough there carries symbolic weight beyond the raw seat count, suggesting the party's appeal has deepened beyond its traditional electoral base.
Bardella, a close ally of Le Pen, is widely seen as her likely prime minister if she wins the presidency. He was the party's de facto presidential candidate until July, when an appeals court cleared Le Pen to run for the presidency herself, upending the succession plan that had appeared to be underway. That history matters here: Bardella's political identity is tied to his role as the youthful architect of the RN's rebrand, which makes allegations of past anti-Semitic messaging an attack on his core asset.
The RN's own history provides the backdrop against which the allegations are being judged. The party was founded as the National Front by Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine's father, and its early decades were marred by anti-Semitic, racist, and xenophobic controversies. Marine Le Pen led the party from 2011 to 2021 and changed its name to Rassemblement National in 2018 as part of an explicit effort to break with that legacy. Bardella's leadership has continued that project, presenting the party as a mainstream force focused on immigration, security, and national sovereignty.
Yet the party's efforts to sanitize its image have repeatedly run into trouble. During the 2024 legislative elections, a slew of anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and racist comments by RN candidates damaged its chances of winning a parliamentary majority, prompting Bardella at the time to pledge he would avoid what he called "casting errors" by systematically expelling candidates with a history of toxic statements. The new allegations revive precisely the vulnerability the party has spent years trying to manage.
How the defamation lawsuit proceeds will be closely watched. If Bardella files, the case could force Mediapart to defend its reporting and its authentication methods in court, but it could also keep the story in the news cycle for months during a critical pre-campaign period. For a party whose central selling point to undecided voters is respectability, the mere persistence of the controversy may prove as damaging as its substance, regardless of the legal outcome.
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