The wave. This is how the French newspaper defined it Figaro, referring to the overwhelming victory of the Rassemblement National (Rn) in France during these European Championships. Enough to overwhelm President Emmanuel Macron and push him to dissolve the national assembly and call legislative elections for June 30th. But who is the “captain”, as the slogans on TikTok say, who has so far surfed on the wave of the transalpine far right? Marine Le Pen, leader of the RN for years, wanted the reference face to become the young Jordan Bardella in 2022, who at just 27 years of age took over the reins of the party, assuming the role of president. The choice fell on him above all for his communication skills, a cut above the rest of the historical militants. His followers are over 500 thousand on Instagram and over one million on Tik Tok.
The post published on the occasion of this historic victory on June 9th tells several things about this child prodigy of French politics. “When the people vote, the people win”, he stated in the phrase that summarizes the populist imprint of the party. The photo: Bardella receives a kiss from Marine Le Pen. Without her the miracle would not have been possible. He is the emerging figure, but he still needs to show recognition towards her. It is she who chose him to further “rejuvenate” the party founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, to ward off accusations of anti-Semitism and extremism, to fascinate young people and drag them to the polls, to have international credibility. In short, to come to power.
Bardella’s political path
The young leader said he grew up in a single-parent home in Drancy, a suburban area north of Paris. He is an only child, born into a modest family of Italian origin, in which Algerian blood also flows, to Olivier Bardella and Luisa Bertelli-Mota. After enrolling at the university in the geography department, he abandoned his studies to devote himself to politics. His membership in the then Front National dates back to 2012. At just 20 years old, in 2015 he was elected regional councilor of the Île-de-France region. He assumed the role of spokesperson in 2017 and became national secretary of the youth wing of the Génération Nation party (formerly the National Youth Front) until 2021. At the last European elections (2019) he was elected as an MEP, but between the corridors of Brussels and Strasbourg , according to the accusations of Manon Aubry, MEP of the far-left party France Insoumise, we have seen very little of it. Bardella has been very busy on television sending out anti-immigration rants, skillfully relaunching them on social media and in the squares, with his face always available for the highly requested selfies.
Bardella’s key messages
“Only one opponent: Macron, only one enemy: abstentionism”, the commitment to “make France great again”, the idea of ”being happy young people against fatalism”. These are some of the key phrases for the launch of the electoral campaign for these European elections. While rejuvenating the image, the party’s strong point has remained the same as that of its mentor Marine Le Pen. Bardella on TV and on the radio accused immigrants of representing “almost all” harassment of women, claimed that on French soil there are tens of thousands of “sympathisers of Hamas, Islamist ideology and the Muslim Brotherhood”, spoke of a “state of emergency” due to attacks and thefts. The responsibles? Subtext: immigrants.
The easy challenge
The details shared publicly about his childhood, when he lived on the eighth floor of a squalid building in a crime-ridden area in the Seine-Saint-Denis, north-east of Paris, also bring him closer to popular sentiment. The electoral challenge was all in all easy to fight. Her main opponent was Valerie Hayer, former MEP and leader of Macron’s party in Europe, but little known and with little appeal on social media. To complicate things for him, on May 23rd Prime Minister Gabriel Attal took the field directly in a television debate, personally confronting Bardella. Attal portrayed the young leader of the RN as leading a party without substance, in reality with little interest in Europe. Not even this move paid off for the Renaissance party, which stopped just above a paltry 14%.
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Change of clothes, not of substance
On election night, when the first sensational results came out, Bardella addressed the head of the Elysée directly: “France has issued its verdict and there is no appeal”, he said, after having urged Macron to call the elections . His victory coincides with the new structure of the Rassemblement national, which is no longer oriented towards exit from the European Union, but towards “the determination of our country so that the European Union changes direction”. Already during the election campaign he had argued: “I’m not against Europe. I’m against the way Europe works today.” Not even the new face of the French far right is free from controversy. In January of this year, a television report accused Bardella of using an anonymous Twitter account to share racist messages when he was a local elected official. According to experts, Bardella’s role is not to change the direction of the party, but only to create youth appeal in order to have a “captain” to whom to entrust the direct clash with Macron. Since the time of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the objective has changed over the years, but not the strategy. Anti-Semitic perhaps no longer, anti-immigrant certainly yes.
