Bardella Threatens Libel Suit as Antisemitism Claims Jolt French Presidential Race

Jordan Bardella, the president of France's hard-right National Rally (RN), has announced plans to sue for libel following a media investigation that alleged he made a series of antisemitic remarks as a young activist more than a decade ago. The claim, published by the investigative website Mediapart, has injected a volatile new element into a presidential campaign that is still seven months from its first round and in which the RN is currently riding high in the polls.

Mediapart said its report was the product of several months of investigation and drew on what it described as dozens of written conversations allegedly involving Bardella in 2013, when he was 17 or 18 years old. According to the outlet, the exchanges contained crude antisemitic stereotypes. Among the remarks attributed to Bardella were the assertion that "all the banks are owned by Jews", the claim that "the Jew has to dominate other people, crush them and rob them", and a warning about a "new world order dominated by Israel, with of course Jerusalem as its capital".

The publication acknowledged that it did not publish screen-grabs of any of the alleged remarks. It said instead that it had "independently authenticated" the conversations, which it described as coming from "a bigger documentary base corroborated by witness statements". That decision is likely to become a central point of contention in any legal battle, with Bardella's team expected to argue that the absence of direct documentary evidence undermines the credibility of the allegations.

Bardella, 31, reacted quickly and forcefully. Speaking to the television channel CNews on Monday night, he rejected the report as a fabrication designed to derail his party's momentum. "Everything is going to be done to destabilise the campaign," he said, suggesting that either Mediapart was running the operation itself or was being manipulated by interested parties. He confirmed that he had instructed his lawyer to pursue a libel action.

The RN leader framed the allegations as "the beginnings of a total war" aimed at destabilising his party. His response reflects the stakes involved: Bardella is widely seen as a likely prime minister if Marine Le Pen, the RN's presidential candidate, wins next year's election. A serious and sustained controversy over antisemitism could complicate the party's efforts to present itself as a mainstream force capable of governing.

Le Pen, the daughter of the party's historic founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, offered her full confidence in Bardella. She said the alleged remarks "seem so weird that they can only be a forgery – one of those dirty tricks for which Mediapart appears to hold the secret". Her intervention was notable both for its loyalty to her protégé and for its combative tone, signalling that the RN intends to fight the story politically as well as legally rather than retreat.

Mediapart is an avowedly left-wing website that has exposed a number of scandals over the years, though its targets have spanned the political spectrum. Its latest investigation lands at a delicate moment for the RN, which has spent years trying to distance itself from the antisemitic roots of the French far right. Under Le Pen's leadership, the party has sought to professionalise its image, soften its rhetoric and broaden its electoral appeal beyond its traditional base.

The RN has made particular efforts to reach out to Jewish voters. Last year Bardella became the first senior figure from the party to be invited to Israel, attending a conference on antisemitism. The party now presents militant Islam as a pre-eminent threat, a position it shares with many Jewish voters, and styles itself as a "shield for the Jewish community". The alleged comments attributed to Bardella cut directly against that carefully constructed narrative.

The reported remarks were condemned across the political spectrum. Left-wing politicians called on Bardella to resign, arguing that the allegations raised fundamental questions about his character and suitability for high office. Yonathan Arfi, the head of Crif, the umbrella organisation representing Jewish communities in France, said the alleged comments "were an illustration of the limits of the RN's clean-up act" – a pointed suggestion that the party's transformation may be more cosmetic than real.

The RN pushed back hard against the report. Party deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy said the source of the allegations was disaffected former members who had been expelled years earlier because of their antisemitic ideas. "From what I know, it is the antisemitic rabble that were so bravely purged by Marine Le Pen," he said, adding that such figures had been numerous and well-organised in the early 2010s but had been defeated. "These people have always had it in for us," he added, implying a score-settling motive behind the leak.

The controversy unfolds against a backdrop of remarkable electoral strength for the RN. The latest polling this week, from Toluna-Harris, showed Le Pen as a clear victor over whichever rival she faces in the crucial second round in May. According to the survey, she would take 35-36% of the vote in the multi-candidate first round. Her likely opponent in a two-way run-off would be Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the radical left, whom she would defeat by 69% to 31%. The same poll contained a stark warning for the political establishment: Le Pen would also comfortably beat the most popular centrist candidate, Edouard Philippe, with 57% of the vote.

The RN received another boost on Sunday when results from a partial election for the upper house of parliament, the Senate, produced for the first time enough seats for the party to form an official group. That outcome gives the party a more formal institutional foothold and reflects its steady encroachment into areas of French political life once considered beyond its reach. Taken together with the presidential polling, the result underscores why the antisemitism allegations are being treated as such a serious threat by Bardella and his allies.

Mediapart's report also speaks to a broader argument about the RN's evolution. The outlet contends that the current of far-right thinking reflected in the alleged comments has never been eradicated, only covered up by the party's modernising project. That claim strikes at the heart of the RN's central political proposition: that it is no longer the party of its founders but a legitimate contender for power. For Le Pen, who has staked her career on that transformation, the allegations are as much a test of her strategy as they are of Bardella's future.

With seven months to go before the presidential election, the coming weeks will determine whether the story fades or takes hold. Bardella's libel suit may shift the argument into the courts, while the RN's opponents will seek to keep it alive in the public debate. The episode raises questions about the vetting of young activists, the accountability of political leaders for remarks made in their youth, and the reliability of journalism based on authenticated but unpublished documents. For a party that has spent years insisting it has changed, the answers could shape the final stretch of the campaign.