France loves revolution, but one mild-mannered, impeccably dressed rebel named Jordan Bardella, 28, has vowed to upend the country’s politics to save it from “annihilation.”
Bardella, head of the National Rally, is a protégé of Marine Le Pen, the 55-year-old perennial far-right presidential candidate who once called her a “lion cub” and now calls her a “lion.” The clean-cut, strong-jawed TikTok star, known for her love of candy, has been a surefire stalwart in French politics.
With European elections looming on Sunday, Bardella, who led the party’s campaign, seems poised to score a game-changing victory in French politics. An Ipsos poll released last week gave the Rally National about 33 percent of the vote, more than double the 16 percent won by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party.
Even if the effectiveness of the European Union’s only directly elected institution were limited, this would be a clear repudiation of the French leadership. As in the rest of Europe, the normalization of the far right is proceeding swiftly.
It’s as if a divided France, tired of politics as usual and anxious about the future, has suddenly found a more palatable version of the xenophobic politics that has long positioned the Rally National as a direct threat to French democracy. It helps that Bardella is young, has reassuring showmanship and doesn’t wear the name Le Pen.
Indeed, his success is such that a leadership contest is looming: For now, Ms. Le Pen and the prodigal son are embracing each other and making a seemingly harmonious pair (Mr. Bardella is dating Ms. Le Pen’s niece, Nolwenn Olivier), but Mr. Bardella’s popularity is such that the prodigy could eclipse his creator.
Le Pen remains steadfast in her desire to become president when Macron’s term ends in 2027. She has said that if she becomes president, she would make Bardella prime minister.
“The moderate right is dead in France and the Rally National could come to power for the first time,” said Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist who studies European nationalist movements.
Raised in a housing complex north of Paris by an Italian immigrant mother, Mr. Bardella is different from the cookie-cutter technocrats from elite schools who have dominated French politics. He has recast the angry message of right-wing nationalists in a way that some might say sugar-coated but is so effective that the term “Valdellamania” has been coined.
“Our civilization may die,” Bardella told more than 5,000 flag-waving supporters last week, as chants of “Jordan! Jordan!” rang out in Paris’ vast arena. “Our civilization may die because it is engulfed by immigrants who will irreversibly change our habits, our culture and our way of life.”
Alexandre Loubet, Bardella’s campaign manager, said that if the Rally National wins a clear victory, his party will demand “the dissolution of the National Assembly” and new elections. “If Mr Macron has at least some respect for the will of the French people, he will do that,” Loubet said.
Macron, who is term-limited and has three more years in office, is unlikely to do such a thing, whatever the outcome.
In his always calm and collected speech, Bardella said Macron had led France to the abyss through a surge in migration, a botched response to lawlessness and violence, a loss of French identity and “punitive” changes that made life difficult.
“Everything is getting worse and worse,” said Alain Foy, a concierge who attended Bardella’s rally in Paris. “It’s hard to believe what’s going on – immigration, purchasing power, insecurity – everything.” His sister, Marie Foy, added: “France is falling apart.”
Foy said that in the past anyone opposed to the Rally National would have immediately branded Le Pen a racist or a fascist, “but the good thing about Bardella is that he shares the same views but you can’t call him a racist because he’s the son of immigrants with Italian parents.”
Mr. Bardella’s upbringing on the outskirts of Seine-Saint-Denis is unclear, but he describes a childhood of relentless hardship in a neighborhood rife with drug dealing and violence, where refusing to smoke could mean death, and where his mother, who separated from his father when he was one year old, struggled to make ends meet.
But Mr. Bardella attended a private school, the Lycée Saint-Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, whose fees were paid for by his father, who runs a coffee and vending-machine rental business, said Pascal Humeau, a long-time friend of Mr. Bardella.
Bardella turned out to be a good student with strong political beliefs, and joined the party he now leads (then called the National Front) in 2012, at the age of 16. He did a week-long internship at his local police station, an experience that appears to have influenced his political leanings.
“I obviously didn’t come from a working-class family, but I wasn’t privileged either,” said Camus. Bardella graduated high school with honors but dropped out of college to pursue politics, which was essentially his only career.
With his measured demeanor and charismatic good looks, he was quickly recognised among Ms Le Pen’s inner circle as the ideal representative of a reconstituted National Rally that had removed the anti-Semitic accusations of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had called the Holocaust a “detail” of history.
Le Pen has been working hard to propel her party into the mainstream and has backed Bardella, while former journalist Humeau became Bardella’s media trainer in 2018. He found in Bardella “an empty, very restrained young man who repeats Le Pen’s standard phrases, but who seems to know very little about what is going on in France or the world, and who is quite sad.”
But Bardella quickly learned, adopting a smile and appearing relaxed, while retaining his “consensual modesty,” before transforming into what Humeau calls “a modern, frightening media beast.”
What for, I asked? “He’s had one goal since he was 17: to become prime minister and president,” Mr. Humeau said. “I don’t think anyone can thwart his plans.”
If Bardella was trying to portray the more moderate side of the National Coalition, there is little or no evidence that his own views or those of the party have been moderated.
Mass migration – some 5.1 million migrants are expected to enter the European Union in 2022, more than double the previous year, according to opinion polls – has become a central issue in the European elections, along with the war in Ukraine causing high energy and food prices and leaving French families struggling to make ends meet.
In this context, the Rally National has succeeded in creating the impression of being the home of French patriotism and the party of people who are rightly concerned that immigration is getting out of control.
Mr. Bardella, who is of Italian descent, was able to argue that the problem is not immigration itself, but the refusal of many immigrants to assimilate. The French left tends to be suspicious of the very term patriotism, seeing it as a step toward nationalism and even war.
The benefits that immigration brings to societies facing a shrinking labor force and tax base are generally overlooked, with the right instead focusing on how immigrants, particularly North African Muslims, are benefiting from handouts and changing the face, customs and culture of urban neighborhoods.
“We have the courage and clarity to say that once France becomes everyone’s country, it will no longer be anyone’s country,” Bardella said last week. “With the relaxation of immigration controls, Islamic totalitarianism is not just ordering its fanatics to leave the French Republic, it is trying to conquer it and impose its laws and morality on it.”
Bardella accused Macron of wanting to expand the current 27-nation European Union to 37, including “Islamist” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, and of giving up France’s veto power over EU foreign policy decisions.
Turkey’s EU accession talks have in fact been frozen for a long time, and Macron’s attachment to French sovereignty is strong. Bardella’s soft-spoken tone may be hiding a readiness to bend the truth.
With vague evasions, he has sought to downplay his longtime closeness to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, a policy that has now been revised despite his party’s repeated pro-Russian votes in the European Parliament. In 2021, for example, the party voted against a resolution supporting Ukraine’s “independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
While Bardella campaigned on the specter of the “death” of France, Macron has also spoken in apocalyptic terms in recent days, warning of “death” if Europe does not achieve “strategic independence.”
The difference is that Bardella believes salvation lies in shrinking Europe, not expanding it. The European elections will be a harbinger for the very idea of Europe.
“I’m worried that people won’t vote because of Le Pen’s name and because of her father,” said Jacky Lacquey, a former factory worker who attended a recent rally for Bardella in northern France. “Bardella represents the future of France.”
Indeed, it seems unlikely that Bardella will be leaving politics anytime soon. “At 28, he has 40 years of political life ahead of him,” Camus said. “That’s no small thing.”
Segolene Le Stradic Contributed report.
