French far-right’s Bardella denies alleged antisemitic comments, files defamation lawsuit

A French investigative website on Monday alleged that far-right National Rally (RN) leader Jordan Bardella made antisemitic comments in writing in 2013 but the close ally of presidential front runner Marine Le Pen dismissed the claims as fake.

According to the report by Mediapart, Bardella wrote, among other comments, in a chat: “The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so.”

Bardella, 31, tipped to be prime minister if Le Pen becomes France’s president, wrote on X he “formally” rejected the allegations which he described as “crude forgeries”.

He later told the CNews broadcaster that his lawyer had filed a lawsuit for defamation. Bardella said he believed he was being targeted in an attempt to “destabilise the campaign” by the RN to win the French presidency and to “kill me off politically”.

Mediapart’s investigation is built on comments in private chats allegedly written by Bardella in the summer of 2013 when he was 17 or 18 years old. Mediapart maintains it authenticated the comments. It did not specify where the messages had been written or publish screenshots.

The young activist, who had joined the far-right party then known as the National Front (FN) a year and a half earlier, allegedly also said: “And that is what they want: a New World Order dominated by Israel, with Jerusalem as the capital, of course.”

He was also alleged to have written “all the banks are owned by Jews”.

Le Pen herself told reporters she believed the purported comments were “fake” and accused Mediapart, which has locked horns with the RN on multiple occasions, of “dirty tricks”.

“I am, like everyone else, astonished by the violence of the antisemitic remarks attributed to Jordan Bardella, which obviously cannot be explained away even by youth,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), told Agence France-Presse.

Slamming Bardella’s party as a “haven for identitarians and conspiracy theorists”, he said: “You cannot claim to be fighting antisemitism on the one hand while continuing to be a haven for identitarians of all kinds, especially those who propagate antisemitic rhetoric.”

Anti-discrimination minister Aurore Berge said the comments, if authenticated, were “extremely serious”.

“Their antisemitic and conspiracist nature reminds those who would like to forget it of the true nature of the far right,” she wrote on social media.

Bardella, a savvy user of social media who projects a clean-cut image, has been a key player in Le Pen’s project of “de-demonisation” to make the RN into an electable force.

Both have moved to rid it of the legacy of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen who founded and led the FN and repeatedly made antisemitic remarks.

Bardella made an unprecedented visit to Israel in 2025, the first by a French far-right leader, in a bid to demonstrate the RN’s new credentials.

The allegations emerged as Le Pen’s prospects for the 2027 elections appear stronger than at any point in her previous campaigns.

A new poll on Monday showed that Le Pen would lead the first round of voting to succeed President Emmanuel Macron and suggested she could easily defeat potential rivals in the second-round run-off.

She also hailed as “historic” the RN winning enough seats in France’s Senate to form a faction in the upper house chamber for the first time. Le Monde newspaper described it as a “breakthrough” for the movement and a “warning” for other parties.

The Toluna-Harris survey for RTL and M6 published on Monday showed that Le Pen would win around 35-36 per cent in the first round of voting, scheduled for April 18, if the election were held now.

In the second round, on May 2, the poll indicated she would emerge victorious against hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Melenchon or centrist front runner Edouard Philippe.