Le Pen party leader ‘shared racist posts on Twitter’
National Rally’s Bardella denies claims he used secret accounts to spread hate before rise to the top
JORDAN BARDELLA, the 28-year-old leader of the French hard-right, has been accused of using an anonymous account on Twitter, to spread racist messages when he was a local elected official.
The allegations against the president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party were made in an investigative report broadcast on state TV channel France 2 yesterday evening.
The report cites “three people who used to be close to him” from 2015 to 2017 as saying that Mr Bardella used the pseudonym “Repnat du Gaito” on Twitter, now known as X, to share racist messages.
Mr Bardella in the report denied this, telling France 2: “I am sorry to disappoint you, but I only have one Twitter account. I will not stand by comments I did not make.”
The report says he also used the network to sing the praises of Jean-marie Le Pen, the co-founder of the Front National (the RN’S predecessor) who has several convictions for racism and anti-semitism.
Mr Bardella recently said he had no problem with Mr Le Pen, who once called the Nazi gas chambers a “detail of history” before back-pedalling.
One 2017 post from the “Repnat du Gaito” account includes an obscene image mocking Theo Luhaka, a young black man who suffered severe anal injuries from a police baton that year, in an assault for which three policemen are now on trial.
Victor Chabert, an RN spokesman, defended Mr Bardella and messaged a France 2 reporter: “You will be prosecuted and a formal notice has been sent to France Télévisions [the group that owns France 2]”.
Mr Bardella, who surveys suggest is one of France’s most popular politicians, is leading RN’S European election campaign.
His group is polling to come comfortably first in the June European Parliament election, some 10 points ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance group.
Mr Bardella was formally elected to lead the National Rally in 2022, replacing three-time presidential candidate Ms Le Pen after more than a decade at the head of the party.
He has also been an MEP since 2019.
Ms Le Pen is widely expected to run in the 2027 presidential elections. She has made it clear that Mr Bardella would be her preferred prime minister if she wins.
In the report, Ms Le Pen tells France 2 that her protégé has the qualities to lead a government.
“He even has qualities for something else. That’s the real question that I will have to ask myself when the time comes,” she adds, without elaborating.
In a rare press conference on Tuesday, Mr Macron – who beat Ms Le Pen in 2017 and 2022 – adopted some of the hard-right’s themes in an apparent attempt to stem the RN’S rising popularity – notably using the phrase “so that France can remain France”.
But he also attacked the RN, calling it the party of “collective impoverishment” and “lies”, arguing that it offered no workable responses to France’s problems.