Hear
PARIS.– France likes revolutions, and In Jordan Bardella, 28, he has found a mild-mannered, impeccably dressed insurgent what promises radically change the country’s politics to save it from “disappearance.”
Bardella, the president of the National Group, is the beloved disciple of Marine Le Pen, 55 years old, the eternal far-right presidential candidate. Once she called him “lion cub”; now she He calls him “the lion.”. A clean-cut, strong-jawed TikTok star known for her love of sweets has certainly proven a sure hand in the French political jungle.
Bardella, who led his party’s campaign for the European elections, He achieved a victory on Sunday that could reshape French politics. His party obtained 31.37% of the votes, a historic result that pushed President Emmanuel Macron to call early elections.
Although the effective power of the European Parliament, the only directly elected body of the European Union, was limited, the vote was a clear repudiation of the French leader. As in the rest of Europe, the normalization of the far right has advanced rapidly.
It is as if a fractured France, tired of politics as usual and anxious about its future, would have abruptly discovered a more acceptable version of xenophobic politics which for a long time presented the National Rally as a direct threat to French democracy. It has helped that Bardella is young, has a reassuring talent for showmanship and does not bear the name of Le Pen.
In fact, its success has been such that a battle for leadership looms. For now, Le Pen and his prodigal son are a seemingly harmonious and cuddling duo (Bardella is dating Le Pen’s niece, Nolwenn Olivier). But Bardella’s popularity is such that there is a chance the child prodigy could eclipse his creator.
Le Pen stubbornly maintains the hope of becoming president in 2027, when Macron’s term ends. She has said that she would name Bardella as her prime minister if he became president.
“The moderate conservative right is dead in France and, for the first time, it is possible that the National Rally will come to power,” said Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist who studies nationalist movements in Europe.
Raised by his mother, an Italian immigrant, in the northern suburbs of Paris, Bardella marks a break with the elite school-trained technocrats who have dominated French politics.. He has reformulated – some would say sweetened – the angry message of the nationalist right so effectively that there is talk of “Bardellamania.”
“Our civilization can die,” Bardella told a flag-waving crowd of more than 5,000 supporters last week, chanting “Jordan! Jordan!” she resonated in a large stadium in Paris. “It can die because it will be submerged by migrants who will have changed our customs, culture and way of life irreversibly.”
Bardella’s campaign manager, Alexandre Loubet, had stated that in the event of a clear victory for the National Rally, the party would “demand the dissolution of the National Assembly” and new elections.
According to Bardella, always in an even tone, Macron has led France to the abyss through rampant immigration, a lax approach to anarchy and violence, the loss of French identity and a “punitive” ecological change that makes life unaffordable.
“Everything is going from bad to worse,” said Alain Foy, a janitor who attended Bardella’s rally in Paris. “Sometimes I can’t believe what’s happening, whether it’s immigration, purchasing power, insecurity, everything.” His sister, Marie Foy, added: “France is falling apart.”
Alain Foy said that in the past, anyone who disagreed with the National Rally would quickly label Le Pen a racist or fascist. “But with Bardella,” he said, “The good thing is that he thinks the same, but you can’t call him racist because he is an immigrant son of Italian parents.”
The exact nature of Bardella’s upbringing in the suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis is unclear. He has portrayed it as a childhood of relentless hardship in neighborhoods affected by drug trafficking and violence, where you could be killed for refusing someone a cigarette, and where his mother, who separated from his father when he was one year old, struggled to make ends meet.
However, Bardella attended a private schoolthe Lycée Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle, where the expenses were paid by his father, who had a small business renting coffee and vending machines, explained Pascal Humeau, close to Bardella for many years.
Bardella proved to be a good student with strong political beliefsand in 2012, At the age of 16, he joined the party he now leads, which was then called the National Front..
“It wasn’t a working-class upbringing, that’s clear, but it wasn’t privileged in any way either.”Camus said. Although he had graduated with distinction from high school, Bardella dropped out of college to focus on politics, essentially the only job he has ever done.
With his deliberate manner and charismatic appearance, He was quickly identified in Le Pen’s entourage as the ideal representative of a reinvented National Group.stripped of the anti-Semitic invective of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who called the Holocaust a “detail” of history.
Marine Le Pen, determined to bring her party into the mainstream, pushed it forward. Humeau, a former journalist, became Bardella’s media coach in 2018. In him he discovered a “quite sad young man, who repeats Le Pen’s formulas, an empty shell, very controlled, but who knows little about what is happening in France or in the world.” “
Bardella was, however, a quick student. He learned to smile and appear more relaxed, retaining an air of “consensual humility” before becoming what Humeau called “today’s media beast that scares its opponents.”
To what end? I asked. ““He has had one goal since he was 17: to become prime minister and president.”Humeau said, “and I don’t think anyone can derail it.”
By Roger Cohen
The New York Times
