Charisma and careful words of Bardella convey extreme right-wing ideas to increasingly sympathetic French public

Jordan Bardella already had a lot in common with Giorgia Meloni. The obsession with immigration. The meteoric rise. Their far-right parties, Bardella’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, have kept tricolour flames, inspired by Benito Mussolini, as their symbols.

The Ocean Viking brought Bardella and Meloni closer in spirit. After three weeks adrift in the Mediterranean, the ship docked in Toulon on Friday morning to unload 230 migrants from Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent.

On November 5th, Bardella became the first person not called Le Pen to lead France’s main far-right party. He describes himself as three-quarters Italian and told his inaugural press conference as president that he feels “much closer to Meloni” than to President Emmanuel Macron.

When Meloni refused to allow the Ocean Viking to dock in Italy, Bardella said, she was protecting her country, as the RN intends to protect France.

Former Catalan leader preaches independence from self-exile

---

Biden stops sending the bombs and tests US ties to Israel

---

Netanyahu’s dilemma: Save the hostages or his government

---

Pride at wunderkind

Bardella’s cabinet sat to the right of the podium, beaming with pride at their wunderkind. He is tall, slim, suave and charismatic, well-dressed and V-shaped from bodybuilding. His adoring followers look lumpy and ill-dressed by comparison, representatives of what is sometimes called lower France.

On BFM TV on Thursday evening, Bardella condemned Macron’s decision to allow the distressed migrants to land as “an avowal of impotence and the collapse of the state”. He linked migration with violence, noting that some of the jihadists who committed atrocities in France infiltrated the record influx of migrants in 2015. “I’m not saying that all the migrants on board the Ocean Viking are terrorists, but some of them may be.”

It is a measure of France’s shift rightward that it is no longer considered racist to link immigration to crime. The interior ministry and prefect of Paris police said this week that 81 per cent of thefts on public transport in the Paris region are committed by foreigners. Such statistics are a godsend to the RN.

Bardella’s relaxed manner and carefully chosen words often make the unacceptable sound reasonable. Sending migrant boats back to Africa is, he claims, “the most humane policy”. He accuses NGOs of collusion with the mafia and traffickers, and wants France to follow Australia’s example of a no-way publicity campaign in migrants’ countries of origin.

Bardella grew up in an immigrant banlieue north of Paris. “At age 12 you are confronted with violence, morning noon and night,” he told Le Monde. “The housing projects are run by drug dealers. There were hooded guys in front of the building… Growing up in the projects gives you a carapace for life. It’s good training.”

Bardella joined the Front National at the age of 16. As part of her crusade to “undemonise” the party, Marine Le Pen changed its name in 2018. Bardella led the RN list to victory in the 2019 EU elections, when he was just 24. Last year, Le Pen appointed him interim leader while she campaigned for the presidency of France.

Le Pen now leads the RN group in the National Assembly, where it is the leading opposition party, with 89 seats. Bardella boasts that the RN has 1,000 elected officials and is, according to an Ifop poll, the most popular party in France.

Racist outburst

Bardella won 85 per cent of the votes at the November 5th party congress, but he has not had an easy start. Two days earlier, the RN deputy, Grégoire de Fournas, who was to have been Bardella’s spokesman, was suspended for a racist outburst in the National Assembly.

Carlos Martens Bilongo, a deputy from the far-left France Unbowed party, raised the subject of the Ocean Viking in the Assembly. Fournas shouted either “Send him back to Africa”, referring to Martens Bilongo, who is of Congolese and Angolan origin, or “Send them back to Africa”, referring to the migrant boat.

“He was obviously talking about the boat,” Bardella said, as if that were a less racist comment. Le Pen and Bardella subsequently lectured deputies to avoid inflammatory speech. “There is no point in provocation,” Bardella said. “We are one step away from power. We can take that step, or we can miss it.”

It then emerged that Hervé Juvin, an MEP for the RN, was last month fined €10,000 for kicking and hitting his wife in 2018. Juvin has been suspended from the party while he appeals. Bardella commented that “Unfortunately, violence against women touches all milieus, without regard to race, religion or political orientation.”

Bardella’s ascent was also marred by resentment on the part of Steeve Briois and Bruno Bilde, Le Pen loyalists whom he axed from the 12-person executive bureau. Briois and Bilde accused him of a “purge” of the “social line” of the RN and of wanting to return to hard-line identity politics.

Le Pen travelled to Hénin-Beaumont, where Briois is mayor, on Friday in the hope of easing tension. “I am very unhappy about this misunderstanding,” she said. “It’s like seeing a couple one loves get divorced.”

Not without humour, Bardella addressed the accusations of a purge. “For three years… you’ve said I was the showcase of the RN,” he told journalists. Reading from notes he continued. “I wrote it all down. ‘The symbol of modernity in a party that is becoming normal’. All of you explained I was ‘the heir’, the ‘almost filial successor to Marine Le Pen, facing down the old guard’. You wrote that. In 24 hours, I became ‘the herald of radicalism’, a ‘practitioner of identity politics’ and ‘the advocate of redemonisation’. I am the same as I was last week. I have not changed.”

Far-right victory

Bardella has been compared to a young Jacques Chirac. Those French people who dread the possibility of a far-right victory in the next presidential election fear he appeals to a broad spectrum of the electorate. “I think I have the capacity to open the RN up to people who haven’t voted for it until now,” he says, “to people who feel orphaned by the right and the left.”

Macron cannot stand for a third term and has no obvious successor.

Bardella shows no sign of stabbing Le Pen in the back, as Macron did François Hollande. He calls Marine Le Pen “the most legitimate candidate for the next presidential election” because “she won 17 per cent in 2012 and 42 per cent [of the vote] this year and we are the leading opposition to Emmanuel Macron.”

Le Pen may promise to name Bardella as prime minister. Or he could be a substitute candidate if she bows out.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, now 94, applauded Bardella’s election as president of the party he founded 50 years ago. Despite appearances, the RN remains a family business, for Bardella is the partner of Nolwenn Olivier, Le Pen’s granddaughter and Marine Le Pen’s niece.

Bardella wants to draw a line under the murky past of the far-right. But can he convince the French that it has truly changed?

“I am not the curator of a museum,” Bardella says. “I have no contact with Jean-Marie Le Pen, though I thank him for his support. He was reproached for many things in his life, but at the end of the day he was a French patriot who warned people very early about the dangers threatening this country.”