From Searchlight Magazine
Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN), is facing allegations that he made a series of antisemitic statements in private messages during the early years of his political career.
An investigation by French investigative publication Mediapart, published yesterday, says it examined dozens of private conversations dating from 2013 to 2015, when Bardella was a young activist in the National Front, the party which later became the RN.
Mediapart says the messages were independently authenticated and supported by testimony from former party colleagues. Among the statements it attributes to Bardella is the claim that “all the banks are owned by Jews”.
‘Jewish control’
Other messages reportedly attributed to him invoke familiar antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of finance and politics. According to Mediapart, Bardella wrote that “the Jew” should dominate other peoples, while linking Zionism, banking and a supposed “new world order dominated by Israel”.
The publication also reports that Bardella referred favourably to figures associated with the French far-right’s antisemitic milieu, including Alain Soral and comedian Dieudonné. Soral, a former National Front figure, has repeatedly been convicted in France over antisemitic and other offences.
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