French far-right leader Bardella refutes anti-Semitism allegations

The president of France’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally or RN), Jordan Bardella, has denied allegations of anti-Semitism.

Bardella’s refutation on Monday followed the publication of a report by the Mediapart outlet alleging that the politician sent anti-Semitic private messages a decade ago. The report emerged shortly after RN secured a record 14 seats in the Senate, confirming its strong prospects ahead of presidential elections early next year.

The 31-year-old politician, a close ally of presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen, claimed that the “activist press” is orchestrating “smear operations” to “destabilise” RN’s presidential campaign, just as “the victory of our ideas has never been so close”.

“Since I began engaging in politics, I have never had any ambiguity about the fight against anti-Semitism and was received by the Israeli government in 2025,” Bardella told the right-wing French media outlet CNews.

Mediapart wrote that in a chat, Bardella had said: “The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so.”

The left-leaning outlet said it had independently authenticated the private messages and had also drawn on testimony from former party colleagues.

The youthful Bardella has led the RN party’s rebrand as it seeks to break from racist and anti-Semitic history it developed when it was named the National Front. The party, founded by Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, and led by Marine from 2011 to 2021, changed its name in 2018.

A slew of anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and racist comments by candidates impacted the party’s ⁠chances of winning a parliamentary majority in France’s legislative vote in 2024.

Bardella at the time pledged to avoid what he called “casting errors” by systematically kicking out candidates with a history of toxic statements.

He was the party’s de facto presidential candidate until July, when an appeals court cleared Marine Le Pen to run for the presidency.

On Monday, she said the report could “only be a fake, a manipulation, a dirty trick”, adding that she expects Bardella to file an imminent defamation lawsuit.

Le Pen has also sought to clear the party’s racist image and emphasised building closer ties with Israel.