28-year-old Jordan Bardella can become one of the EU’s strongest right-wing radical voices

Attracting voters through Tiktok and selfies

PARIS. Jordan Bardella leads the opinion polls by a large margin ahead of the EU elections in France tomorrow. Next term, the 28-year-old may become the union’s strongest right-wing radical voice.

– He attracts voters in all social classes and is not weighed down by the name Le Pen, says Nicolas Lebourg, an expert on far-right movements, about the success story that is about to end French politics.

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Jordan Bardella is in the middle of a steamy speech about the importance of being proud as a Frenchman when the audience at the Le Dôme convention hall in Paris begins to sing the Essay de Marseille. It usually only happens when the leader of the National Assembly has finished speaking, but this time he has to wait out his followers before continuing:

– I wasn’t done yet, but thanks anyway, and celebrate with a smile.

The approximately five thousand people in the audience have already been won, it is Jordan Bardella’s core troops who have made it here to the last big meeting of the EU election campaign. But Bardella has great confidence far beyond the volunteers of his own movement.

Ahead of the EU parliamentary elections, the National Assembly is stable above thirty percent in opinion polls. It is miles ahead of Valérie Hayer, main candidate on the governing party Renaissance EU-list, who gathers just above 15 percent, in turn just ahead of the Socialist candidate Raphaël Glucksmann.

Five years ago, Marine Le Pen’s and Emmanuel Macron’s parties took home the same number of mandates in the EU elections. This time, the question is how big the far-right victory will be.

Bardella goes on to agitate about how on June 9 France “will decide whether we will continue to be France”, about how “our civilization may die if we do not quickly take control of immigration” and other familiar horror scenarios from the far-right menu. He is far from the first to do so, either in Europe or in France, and he does not present particularly concrete proposals of his own either. So why is Jordan Bardella the Nationals’ new darling?

Accused of exaggerating

The 28-year-old from Saint-Denis just north of Paris has made a career at rocket speed in the party which, until three years ago, was always led only by the Le Pen family. In September 2021, on his 26th birthday, Jordan Bardella took over as National Assembly party leader from Marine Le Pen. The latter is known for getting rid of challengers within the movement, but Bardella enjoys her full confidence, so much so that he gets to lead the party, while Le Pen profiles herself as a presidential candidate. She has already declared that Bardella will become prime minister if she wins the 2027 election.

Unlike Marine Le Pen, who likes to claim to represent the “forgotten French people in the countryside” even though she was raised in a castle just outside Paris, Bardella comes from fairly simple circumstances. Saint-Denis is France’s poorest commune and one of the most densely populated by immigrants. Here, Bardella grew up in a family with dominant Italian and a little Algerian origin.

– I, who come from somewhere else and am proud to be French, ask you to never apologize for being proud to be French, he thunders from the stage at Le Dôme in Paris this afternoon. He says that the French “have the option to resist, or disappear”.

Bardella is sometimes accused of exaggerating his simple upbringing, in fact his father was self-employed and his mother a specialist teacher. But when he talks about France’s migration problem – and this is, unsurprisingly, his big heart – he has more credibility than most French politicians, who tend to be hatched from the same elite university regardless of political domicile. Unlike basically everyone else, he does not have an academic degree with him into politics.

After high school, Bardella failed to get into the status-filled Science Po, a kind of higher state administration education, and instead began studies in geography, among other things, before putting them on the shelf to devote himself wholeheartedly to politics.

– He hits home in all social classes, because everyone can identify with him, says Nicolas Lebourg, expert and researcher on right-wing extremism.

Expected to break through the “glass ceiling”

He believes that Nationell’s move to stop demanding that France leave the EU has broadened the voter base.

– Above all, the upper classes think it’s good. But the EU election itself has never changed political life in France. How it goes does not matter for national politics, says Lebourg.

Despite that, many see Jordan Bardella as a future presidential candidate. Unlike Marine Le Pen, who for a long time dressed so inconspicuously that she was nicknamed “Madame tout le monde” – Madame anyone – Bardella appears in conservative dark blue suits and sometimes a pair of Raybans if the sun is shining. When he was recently challenged in a televised debate with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, 34 – and, according to most pundits, lost – it was almost hard to see any difference between the two political prodigies.

The hardest part for Bardella was when Attal asked how he thought his planned French border controls would be carried out in concrete terms. Should the half a million French who work in one of the neighboring countries have their passports checked every day they go to work? Bardella had no answer to the question, but, despite a mediocre effort, did not lose in the opinion polls.

Active on Tiktok and as a “selfie politician”

So what has he done to break through the supposed “glass ceiling” of 25 percent, which many political experts have long considered to be the limit of Le Pen’s party’s popularity?

– He is young and can beat away all historical criticism of the party. He only says “I don’t know, it was a long time ago” when asked about the party’s past. He has no connection to Jean-Marie Le Pen, he does not even share their surname, says Nicolas Lebourg.

Bardella also appeals to the young through a very thoughtful presence on social media. He has made a name for himself as a Tiktok and selfie politician with over a million followers and when he finished speaking at Le Dôme and the Marseilles was rung for the second time this afternoon, he took time to talk and be photographed with the many young supporters who in place. If the forecast turns out to be true and the National Assembly gets over 30 percent in the election, Jordan Bardella could become the leader of the largest party in the EU Parliament. On Sunday, the stigma that the party has carried for over forty years in France may fall.

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