French far-right leader Bardella denies media claim he made antisemitic remarks

By Michel Rose

PARIS, Sept 28 (Reuters) – French far-right leader Jordan Bardella on Monday denied a report by investigative website Mediapart alleging he made antisemitic remarks in private messages over a decade ago, calling the allegations “crude fabrications”.

The report comes as Bardella’s far-right National Rally (RN) party, whose presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is leading polls ahead of next year’s election, seeks to clear its racist image and build close ties with Israel.

“I formally dispute the accusations against me by Mediapart, which attributes to me deranged and antisemitic remarks that I supposedly made when I was a minor. These are obviously crude forgeries,” Bardella wrote on X. He said he had instructed his lawyer to pursue “all necessary proceedings” against Mediapart.

Mediapart, in a report published on Monday, said it had reviewed dozens of private messages from 2013-2015 – the early years ofBardella’s career in the National Front, the forerunner of the RN – that it said showed a pattern of antisemitic and conspiratorial rhetoric.

Mediapart cited one message in which it said Bardella claimed “all the banks are owned by Jews”.

The left-leaning outlet, which has a long history of unearthing political scandals in France, said it had independently authenticated the private messages, and had also drawn on testimony from former party colleagues, which it named with first names and the initial of their last names.

Bardella, 31, has become the face of the RN’s decade-long effort to “de-demonise”, or normalise, its image. He was the party’s de facto presidential candidate until July, when an appeals court cleared Le Pen to run for the presidency, and will be France’s prime minister if she wins next year’s vote.

Le Pen, speaking with reporters on Monday, said she believed the report could “only be a fake, a manipulation, a dirty trick”. She said she expected Bardella to file an imminent defamation lawsuit, adding she had nothing to discuss with her young protege.

A Monday poll showed her coming first in next April’s first round vote and beating both leftist and centrist candidates in a May runoff.

A slew of antisemitic, Islamophobic and racist comments by some RN candidates derailed the party’s hopes of winning a parliamentary majority in France’s legislative vote in 2024. Bardella at the time pledged to avoid such “casting errors” in the future by systematically kicking out any candidates with a history of toxic statements.

(Reporting by Michel Rose and Juliette Jabkhiro; editing by Gabriel Stargardter, Alexandra Hudson)