For the first time since the party’s creation in 1972, it is not a Le Pen who leads the National Association. Jordan Bardella just won the internal competition by a wide margin against Louis Aliot, with almost 85% of the votes, only 10 years after his debut as a poster gluer. A look back at the dizzying journey of a man considered by some to be the “shadow” of Marine Le Pen.
At 16, the high school student fell into the political pot while watching a TV show pitting Marine Le Pen against Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2011. Which convinced him to take his card and get involved in the Front’s youth body. National (the old number of the RN Editor’s note).
“Always Available, Going Out, Hardworking”
Within a party that lacks militants, the native of Drancy in Seine-Saint-Denis quickly stands out by multiplying round trips between his home in the northern suburbs and the Parisian federation to paste posters in housing estates in the Region. from Paris. .
“I discovered a young man, not even an adult, still in a suit and tie. He was already doing everything right and gave the impression of being the perfect young activist,” recalls Julien Rochedy, then president of the National Youth Front. with BFMTV.com.
This new face is a boon to the movement, which has never really plowed into working-class neighborhoods. Since 2011 and with the arrival of Marine Le Pen at the head of the party, the new head has sought to modernize the party’s image and give it credibility on issues other than the fight against immigration.
At work: Florian Philippot. He also highlights the movement’s number 2, the geography student, “always available, always willing, always hardworking.”
Frexit advocate under Philippot
The former vice president of the party, who seeks to raise executives who can defend his line against that of Marion Maréchal with more identity dyes, defends his candidacy for an eligible position in the regional elections of Île-de-France. Bingo: In 2016, Jordan Bardella may leave at the age of 21 a short-lived position of parliamentary assistant to an MEP for a local elected mandate.
Florian Philippot, who later launched a dozen collectives in all directions to allow frontiers to develop widely, from National Education to entrepreneurship through culture, entrusted the keys to “Banlieues patriotes” to Jordan Bardella.
“At that time, he was in a very social line, he defended Frexit and he understood very quickly that, when we talk about the suburbs, we cannot limit ourselves to immigration but we must also talk about education, housing, transportation. We see that he learns quickly and that he has ambition, ”confesses the one who left the party in September 2017.
Talking about his mother in front of activists
The organ may well be an empty shell and a failure of mobilization, but the ambitious young man is interested in being able to start running his own workshop and work on his storytelling, even if that means sometimes idealizing his career.
In front of party supporters, the 20-something rarely misses an opportunity to talk about his mother who works in a kindergarten with difficult ends of the month. However, the family history is more nuanced between a private high school education and a business-owning father who offers her a Smart for his birthday…
The activists are also crazy about this young face who explains to them that they have lived “the great replacement” on a daily basis in Seine-Saint-Denis, a very controversial expression.
Close to Fréderic Chatillon, founder of Gud, a far-right student group, Jordan Bardella did not hesitate to support the Identity Generation on several occasions, which has since been dissolved by the Ministry of the Interior for “an ideology that incites hatred and violence towards foreigners and the Muslim religion”.
A booed president
Supporters aren’t the only ones under his spell. During a lunch around a pizza in 2016, not far from the movement’s old headquarters in Nanterre, Marine Le Pen gathers all the young people elected to the regional councils and sits next to her.
“Would you like to join me in working with me on the presidential election?” he then asks, as he was told. the obs.
The proposal is obviously irrefutable and the opportunity is too good to be put on the wheel of those who count. But the presidential campaign is difficult, the tensions between Florian Philippot and Marion Maréchal regularly parasitize the candidate until the debate between the two rounds of which she herself recognizes “the strategic error”.
The “needy” files
At the beginning of the 2017 school year, party officials met to discuss the failure of his candidacy. Consigne has gone from bringing new spokespersons, an obligation for a party that has just left its number 2 and the president’s niece, losing at the same time its young media gondola heads.
Marine Le Pen then thinks of Jordan Bardella and asks him to pass the media training box.
“We heard everywhere that it was very good right away. It isn’t true. He worked for days, he learned the letters by heart, like a worker. He watched several times the interviews of the people he was going to face”, mocks a former party member.
Success in the Europeans, failure in the regionals
The method exceeds all expectations, making Jordan Bardella a new media favorite. Enough to allow him to take the head of the national list in the 2019 European elections and emerge victorious with 23%, one point ahead of the presidential majority.
“He was very smart to hide behind the message and know how to say no internally, set limits without getting angry,” deciphers Philippe Olivier, special adviser to Marine Le Pen.
This does not prevent him from sometimes tripping over the carpet. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, he pays a strong tribute to Didier Raoul, congratulating him for being “healthily incorrect”. “He is perhaps to medicine what we are to politics,” advances the elected on France inter.
Despite a poor performance in the Île-de-France region where he only received 10% of the vote in 2021, the head of the party does not blame him and thinks of him when, before the presidential elections, he leaves the presidency . of the movement What allows him to stage a position that he wants above the parties.
“She strokes, he hits”
While Marine Le Pen only debated once during the presidential election between the two rounds against Emmanuel Macron, it is the interim president of the RN who goes to the front against Gérald Darmanin, Clément Beaune, Olivier Véran or Gabriel Attal.
“She stroked with her selfies, he hit with his punchlines. It was no more complicated than that, ”she summarizes, concisely, a deputy.
The opponent of Emmanuel Macron is pleased to stop managing the day-to-day running of the party and, after the surprise entry of 89 RN deputies to the National Assembly, she no longer has the slightest doubt about returning to the path of managing the party. movement. The choice of Jordan Bardella is obvious in her mind, even if an official competition with Louis Aliot, the mayor of Perpignan, is essential.
“Jordan Bardella is not an ideologue but a politician. He does not have a clean line, nor a great backbone. He will always defend what the boss will say. This is the ideal casting,” Julien Rochedy deciphers.
“A filial love” for Marine Le Pen
In a game where several number 2s have taken their independence, at the risk of blowing up RN -from Bruno Mégret to Florian Philippot-, that plasticity has everything to offer. Not to mention “the special relationship” he claims with Marine Le Pen.
“He has an almost filial love for her. There can be no dissent because he is emotional with her,” translates Philippe Olivier.
Jordan Bardella takes special care to give him tokens of love in public, launching into a tribute during the party’s summer colleges in Cap d’Agde, saying “simply thank you” for allowing him to become “the man of action” that he is. “This day”.
“A side of Chirac obsessed with power”
The former candidate for the supreme magistracy has been careful -officially at least- to maintain a position of neutrality between the young man and Louis Aliot, his former partner, several images show Marine Le Pen moved by this tribute. It must be said that the words are almost the same that she herself used in 2011 when she succeeded her father.
The MEP obviously knows which button to push, aided by his private life. He became a close friend of the family by forming a relationship with Nolwenn Olivier, the daughter of Marie-Caroline Le Pen, the sister of Marine Le Pen and her closest adviser, Philippe Olivier. Which allowed him to spend the holidays in the family home last summer in Trinité-sur-Mer, in Morbihan, without taking him away from criticism.
“It’s scary as well as fascinating. There’s a side of Chirac that’s obsessed with the conquest of power,” replies Julien Rochedy kindly.
“Pattern of Double Decimeters”
One of Marine Le Pen’s relatives who regrets his place in the system points out, more cruelly, that he will be “the boss of the double decimeters and of the notebook orders”. The center of the party has shifted to the National Assembly, de facto emptying the movement of its influence with its elected officials.
Other detractors around Louis Aliot also criticize him for the relative benevolence that Jordan Bardella would share with respect to Éric Zemmour.
“He has a very identity line, much more than ours, officially anyway. He’s too smart to really show it, but maybe one day, when things go worse between Le Pen and him, we’ll bite his fingers,” launches a chosen . official who supported the candidacy of Louis Aliot.
Is a Jordan Bardella autonomy really possible in the coming years, with an eye on the Elysee in 2027? Many internally doubt it. A deputy, however, acknowledges half a word that “such a dazzling trip necessarily gives ideas.”
Source: BFM TV
