At only 29 years old, Jordan Bardella, president of France’s right-wing National Rally (RN) Party, finds himself on the cusp of a potential political revolution.
Bardella has urged the French public to join protests this weekend following a court decision on Monday that bars former party chief (and their parliamentary leader) Marine Le Pen from holding public office for five years.
The ruling found Le Pen guilty of misusing EU funds, dealing a major blow to her political ambitions. As the RN’s longtime leader and a leading contender for the 2027 presidential election, the verdict significantly disrupts her campaign plans.
While Bardella is seen as a potential RN candidate for 2027, Le Pen has signaled she is not stepping aside. “I won’t let myself be eliminated like this,” she stated, vowing to appeal what she called a biased ruling designed to derail her presidential bid. Bardella publicly supported her on Tuesday.
Le Pen, a three-time presidential candidate who had declared 2027 her final run, faces a four-year sentence – two years suspended and two under house arrest – along with a €100,000 fine. However, these penalties will only take effect if her appeals fail. The legal process could extend for months or even years.
Presiding Judge Benedicte de Perthuis ruled that Le Pen, who took over party control from her father Jean-Marie, was central to a scheme diverting over €4 million in EU funds, which were allegedly used to pay party staff instead of parliamentary assistants. The court emphasized the defendants’ lack of remorse as a key factor in imposing the immediate political ban. Le Pen and her co-defendants deny any wrongdoing, insisting the funds were used lawfully.
Bardella has positioned himself strongly to run as the party’s candidate (should it choose him) for the 2027 presidential elections. He is the first person not called Le Pen to lead the party (which was renamed from the original National Front) in its 53-year history and has made efforts to reach out to those who would ordinarily feel marginalized or attacked by the party – France’s Jews.
DUE TO the extreme right, nationalist, and anti-immigrant character of the National Front under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen, French Jewish communities boycotted both his daughter and the National Rally, despite Marine having distanced herself very clearly from her father’s views.
While its influence was marginal until 1984, the party’s role as a nationalist electoral force has grown considerably as an alternative to the more traditional parties in France. Whether he will appeal to French Jews as a mainstream alternative remains to be seen.
Bardella, who appeared last week at Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli’s International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, has made efforts to decry antisemitism and position himself as a possible and popular alternative to anything French Jews have had before politically.
“Antisemitism is a poison that must not be dealt with [with] any complacency, in France or in any other part of the world,” Bardella stated in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post last month.
France is facing a resurgence of “ambient antisemitism,” he shared. “It is a fact. This resurgence comes from two phenomena which I fight: the Islamist fundamentalism and its best ally today, the French radical Left.
“On one hand, Islamism bears in itself the hatred of Jews. This hatred is one of its raisons d’etre,” he said. “On the other hand, the radical Left has replaced the tricolor national flag with the Palestinian flag.”
Bardella has also made overtures to Israel and its government. In February, he met with Chikli for the first time at the CPAC conference in Washington. A few days later, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced Israel’s decision to establish formal ties with the National Rally Party as well as with Spain’s VOX and the Swedish Democrats.
BARDELLA CALLED his visit to Israel historic ahead of Chikli’s conference, telling the Post, “It’s my first visit to Israel as a private person, and it’s the first time that a leader of the National Rally Party is officially invited to Israel.
“It is an honor to be officially invited by the government of the State of Israel to express myself in this significant event dedicated to a subject that is very meaningful for European societies, even more so after October 7.”
“It is an honor to be officially invited by the government of the State of Israel to express myself in this significant event dedicated to a subject that is very meaningful for European societies, even more so after October 7.”
He recalled the massacre of Jews in France at the hands of Jihadists, including the 2012 Toulouse Massacre and the 2015 Paris Hyper Cacher Massacre.
“After each of these tragedies, we promised ‘never again,’” said Bardella, yet the military had not yet been deployed to protect synagogues. While the opponents of Israel should have been silenced by the barbarity of October 7, antisemitism had instead been reinvigorated.
“Scenes from another age,” such as Stars of David painted on buildings and people being mistreated because they wore a kippah, were now seen in France, bemoaned the potential RN leader.
Bardella's conscious effort
It is clearly a conscious effort by Bardella, leader of a party that has often been accused of antisemitism in the past, to reach out and connect with French Jews, many of whom experience antisemitism on a regular basis, and the growing rise of the Islamist threat within their country – a country that has always strived to keep state and religion separate.
It is also a positive for him that his surname is not Le Pen, which may attract new followers to the party who had been turned off by the family dynasty, which has run the party since its inception.
Looking ahead only two years and with President Emmanuel Macron’s deepening unpopularity – along with France’s growing domestic issues and threat of Islamist extremism in the country – could Bardella find himself in the right place at the right time? Time will tell.