Jordan Bardella, 27, saw his status as the rising star of the far right confirmed on Saturday, after he was chosen by members of his party to succeed veteran leader Marine Le Pen as National Rally chairman.
The Paris-born politician was the favorite to take over the party after Le Pen decided to step down after 11 years in charge. Formerly known as the Front National, the party was led for 40 years by Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie.
Bardella is now the first party leader outside the family dynasty in half a century. “The fact that the party chairman is not named after Le Pen is a sign of the openness and confidence that Marine has in the new generation,” Bardella told AFP during a recent trip to eastern France.
Not that Le Pen’s ultra-loyal protégé, who was elected to the European Parliament in 2019, intends to overshadow her. “I am a candidate for continuity, with the aim of building on the incredible legacy that Marine delivers,” he added.
Bardella expects Le Pen to become president for a fourth time in 2027 after his record 41.5 percent in the April runoff against President Emmanuel Macron.
Le Pen then led the party’s parliamentary election campaign in June, with the RN winning 89 seats, a tenfold increase, making it the largest opposition party in the National Assembly.
Childhood with a single mother in a violent neighborhood in Paris
Bardella’s only opponent was Louis Aliot, mayor of the southwestern city of Perpignan, who couldn’t match Bardella’s popular profile despite being a party member for over 30 years.
Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal, 32, long seen as the family’s eventual successor, has been out of the picture as she left the party ahead of the latest presidential election to support rival far-right candidate Eric Zemmour.
Bardella has been acting president since September 2021, when Le Pen left office during the presidential campaign. “He has all the qualities and is respected by everyone,” far-right lawmaker Laurent Jacobelli told AFP during a campaign stoppage in mid-October in Hayange, in the Moselle region.
“And he knows how to make different people work together, so why should we change”?”
During that event, Bardella spoke confidently on stage for 40 minutes, without notes, details of her childhood on the eighth floor of a social housing block in the Seine-Saint-Denis district, northeast of Paris, known for violent crime.
The new leader of the far right in France at the time was living with his mother, an Italian immigrant and single mother. “Every day from my window and when I entered the building, I saw that there were drug dealers at the entrance, making sure there were no police,” he said.
There was also an Islamic school across the street, which he shared with the public. “I used to see groups of five, six or seven year old girls going out with veils over their heads,” he added.
Some episodes of personal harassment and riots in 2005, mainly led by young blacks and North Africans against police brutality, led them to join Le Pen’s party at the age of 16, he revealed. “I got involved in politics very early on because I didn’t want all of France to look like what I’ve been through,” he told the crowd.
The modern image of the extreme right
Bardella likes to emphasize that he belongs to a new generation of nationalists who have little in common with the racist and anti-Semitic violence associated with Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National.
Marine Le Pen has gone to great lengths to distance herself from this toxic legacy, although critics say racism is still rife in the party’s ranks and accuse Le Pen of simply repacking old ideas in a new language.
Bardella is the image of this modern, clean and restrained party that she now promotes: apparently well-groomed, always dressed in spotless shirts, polished shoes and short hair.
“Without Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Front National would not exist, but without Marine the party would not have come this far,” Bardella told AFP. “She turned a culture of protest into a culture of government.”
showcase for ascension
Opponents from within the party, including Aliot, have expressed dismay at the new leader’s perceived willingness to embrace the ideas of Le Pen’s far-right rival Eric Zemmour.
Last year, Bardella came close to embracing Zemmour’s mantra of the “Great Replacement,” a conspiracy theory that suggests white Europeans are being deliberately replaced by immigrants.
The young leader also withdrew at the last minute from a plan to participate in a demonstration organized by Zemmour’s party after the murder of a 12-year-old child by an Algerian woman who was deported, in an episode that shocked France .
There are also doubts about the impact of Bardella’s presidency on the party, as Le Pen formally heads her faction in parliament and is widely expected to run for president in 2027.
But many hope that the party’s leadership will be a springboard for Bardella’s political future. “I don’t know if we can say this, and I don’t want to flatter you, but I sincerely believe that Jordan will become president. [francês] one day,” said deputy Laurent Jacobelli.
Source: DN
