Bardella Denies Antisemitism Report as Le Pen Backs Him Before 2027
Jordan Bardella, the head of Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN), is facing calls from political opponents to resign over alleged antisemitic writings he says he never wrote.
Speaking on Sept. 29, 2026, Bardella called the Mediapart report false and accused the outlet of wanting to "kill my political career" The Guardian.
Mediapart published the allegations on Sept. 28, 2026. Its journalists said they independently authenticated comments allegedly written by Bardella between 2013 and 2015 in email groups and messaging services The Guardian. Mediapart said the investigation was based on numerous private conversations supplemented by testimonies Mediapart.
Bardella was 17 to 18 at the time and a member of the Front National, the former name of the National Rally. Among the messages attributed to him, he allegedly wrote "all the banks are owned by Jews." In another passage cited in the investigation, he allegedly wrote "the Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so."
In conversations reported by Mediapart, Bardella also supported Dieudonné Mediapart. Dieudonné is a Black French comedian widely regarded as an anti-Semitic political activist. Organizations fighting racism and antisemitism unanimously condemned the alleged writings.
On Sept. 29, the day after the report, Bardella denounced "les prémices d'une guerre totale" against the RN. He said he would take legal action for defamation, a legal claim that a false statement harmed his reputation. He has filed several defamation complaints in response to the accusations, and said he has filed a lawsuit over the claim that he made antisemitic remarks Reuters.
Marine Le Pen said she had "absolute confidence" in Bardella, described by AFP as her de-facto number two. She described the accusations as "crazy accusations." She said the National Rally would not "se laisser faire" and would seek to uncover who is behind the accusations. AFP describes Le Pen as a French far-right presidential frontrunner who has endorsed Bardella as future prime minister if the far right wins the French presidency in 2027 AFP.
Le Pen expelled her father Jean-Marie Le Pen from the party in 2015 after he repeated antisemitic comments. Bardella visited Israel in 2025 in the first visit by a French far-right leader. He was the first senior figure from the National Rally to be invited to Israel for a conference on antisemitism BBC.
The broader context here is a collision between legal process and election planning. Authentication claims, defamation complaints and counter-accusations of a coordinated campaign will now run in parallel with preparation for the 2027 presidential contest, in which Le Pen intends to place Bardella at the head of a potential government. Whether courts or voters settle the factual dispute first will shape how much room the RN leadership has to present the party as severed from its Front National lineage.
