Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

What Jordan Bardella is doing in Israel

Jordan Bardella (Photo: Getty)

In September 1987, during a radio interview with RTL, the late Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the French National Front, stated that the gas chambers were ‘a detail of the history of the second world war.’ 

This week, Jordan Bardella, the president of the Rassemblement National, the National Front’s rebranded successor, visited the hallowed Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and declared, ‘Concentration camps were the pinnacle of barbarism. No one will be able to forget what was the worst genocidal enterprise ever conducted.’

Bardella, heir to Le Pen, also visited the site of the October 7, 2023 massacre at the Nova music festival, where he met survivors and attentively listened to their blood-curdling stories, and held meetings with Israeli politicians. This was in the margins of his attendance at the International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism organised by Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli.

The minister has worked to strengthen Israel’s relationship with Europe’s new-right parties, which Israel had long boycotted due to their historic ties to anti-Semitism and Nazism. Others on the guest list include Marion Marechal, a talented French conservative politician and MEP, the niece of Marine Le Pen, from whom she is estranged, and Hermann Tertsch, a Spanish MEP.

Inevitably, the invitation by Israel to a leader of a French political party founded by an anti-Semite, who made frequent allusions to Jewish influence, cosmopolitan elites and ‘dual loyalties’, triggered Bernard-Henri Levy and two German officials to cancel their participation in the conference. CNN declared in a headline: ‘Israel embraces France’s far-right, turning a blind eye to its Nazi past.’ 

Eye catching tantrums by Levy and his friends mark a refusal to acknowledge a fundamental shift in the party founded by Le Pen, as it has detoxified itself. The Rassemblement has indeed become almost a centrist party. It is squishy left on the economy. It talks tough on law and order and protecting the Republic. And certainly, it is 100 per cent with Israel and the Jews. If the party has an issue with any religion, it’s with Islam. The TikTok-savvy Bardella, just 29, personifies this. Perhaps this is why the party is feared by President Macron and the Paris blob.  If you are looking to demonise any party in France as anti-Semitic, it is La France Insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which has totally aligned itself with the narrative of Jewish colonialism and occupation.

This weekend, France will be in suspense waiting for the verdict in the embezzlement trial of Marine Le Pen, who is the president of the RN parliamentary group which holds 88 seats in the National Assembly. Her ambition to run for president for the fourth time in 2027 may depend on whether she is convicted (as is likely), then the sentence, which could include both imprisonment and/or immediate disqualification from holding elected office.  My colleague James Tidmarsh, a lawyer in Paris, wrote about this here. It could get tender next week.

The geometry of the forthcoming presidential election is highly variable at this stage in the race but should Marine Le Pen find herself hors de combat next week, Bardella will have done himself good with his visit to Israel, making it that much harder to taint him with the history of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Indeed, the name Le Pen would not be on the ballot.

Bardella is young and it’s not clear yet he has the seasoning for the presidency. But if he is elected in 2027 he will be 31. Macron was elected aged 39, and was then the youngest president in French history.  Older than William Pitt, at least, who took office aged 24. Or he might not get the chance to run at all, if Marine manages to stay in the game.

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