Jordan Bardella accelerates the rise to power of the far right in France

Everything in Jordan Bardella’s life (Drancy, 28) has been accelerated. And it will be difficult to stop him now. In a week he could become the new Prime Minister of France for the National Rally led by Marine Le Pen. And thus bring the Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant far right to power for the first time democratically in the country that prides itself on being the cradle of human rights.

If on July 7, in the second and final round, the polls confirm the advantage obtained this Sunday in the first, Bardella will have advanced his party’s project to conquer power in the 2027 presidential elections by almost three years. One more acceleration in the dazzling career of a young man who joined the RN at the age of 16, was spokesperson for the party at the age of 22, head of the European list and youngest MEP in France at the age of 23, and president of the party since the age of 26.

And if he now manages to lead the first cohabitation government of the far right, at 28 years of age he will be able to set a new milestone. He would be the youngest prime minister of the Fifth Republic and would take not only the job, but also the record of youth from the outgoing head of government and Macronist candidate, Gabriel Attal, who is 35 years old.

The good result of the first round of the legislative elections this Sunday is, to a large extent, the fruit of the so-called de-demonization of the RN that Le Pen undertook more than a decade ago. But the success is also due to Bardella, who gives the definitive impetus to this process of normalization of a party rejected until now by large sectors of the population and the establishment French.

Not anymore. In the two weeks of the electoral campaign, a always suited and neat Bardella, a reflection of the image of credibility that the RN wants to give, has moved fluidly through all stages and layers of society. He has been a constant presence on television sets: according to a journalistic investigation, he appears every three days on at least one radio or television in the country. He has also rubbed shoulders with the Medef employers’ association. And he has been seen in other centers of influence and power such as Eurosatory, one of the main arms fairs in the world and a magnet for senior political and defense officials.

“He is a very kind boy who has understood the problems of the French very well,” said a French military industrialist who on that occasion accompanied him during the two-hour visit to French arms companies, while soldiers and defense officials present followed him. with enthusiasm.

The presence at Eurosatory is not an insignificant detail for someone who seeks to erase the pro-Russian reputation of the RN. During the 2017 presidential campaign, Le Pen met with President Vladimir Putin, and her party was financed with Russian and Hungarian loans. Bardella has also sought to calm, without entirely succeeding, international concern over proposals by her party for France to leave the integrated command of NATO, the core of the Atlantic Alliance.

Another of the RN’s key targets is the youth vote and Bardella “is there for that,” says journalist Pierre-Stéphane Fort, author of an exhaustive biography of the “ideal son-in-law” of French politics, The Great Replacementa title with which he plays with the great theory of the contemporary extreme right of great replacementwhich maintains that Muslim and African immigrants threaten to replace the indigenous European population).

“Marine Le Pen never managed to reach the young people, who did not vote for her, and this is one of the missions she gave to Bardella, which is why she chose him,” Fort tells EL PAÍS. “Today, Bardella is more of a influencer politician than a real politician.” The journalist refers to one of the secrets of the far-right politician’s success: his presence on social networks such as TikTok, where he has more than 1.7 million followers and where, in parallel to his in-person campaign, he has continued to send electoral messages. which, sometimes, touch five million views.

In the European elections that triggered the legislative elections and in which Bardella was also the head of the list, the RN won 32% of the votes of young people aged between 18 and 34. The other usual preserve of young voters, the radical left of France Insoumise, was left with 20% of these votes.

Not bad for a guy of banlieue that he dropped out of university studies, so he only has a high school diploma. Bardella never tires of remembering his childhood in the modest home of his divorced mother, in a troubled neighborhood in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest in France, and with the most immigrants, although in that story he forgets to explain that his father He is a wealthy businessman, Fort recalls.

She received her education, basically, during her rapid rise through the ranks of the RN, a party that, when she joined, still bore the original name of the National Front that Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, had given it when he founded it in 1972 together with veterans of the Algerian war and old Nazi collaborators.

The facelift that her daughter undertook when she took the reins of the formation in 2011 has involved getting rid of those uncomfortable figures, especially the father, expelled in 2015. It continued in 2018 with the name change to RN, thus also getting rid of a brand associated with a dark past—philonazi, anti-Semitic, racist—from which she claims to have now disassociated herself. Although its critics assure that it is nothing more than a layer of varnish behind which many of the former FN officials are still present and very active. Despite Bardella’s fresh face.

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