This is the story of a generation of identity. It is no longer the right outside the walls, as it now has the impression of being within the walls of the news. Because, in ten years, there was the Manif pour tous, Islamist attacks, Brexit. This generation believes and sees itself now at the gates of power. With a common feeling: “We lost the country.” A man embodied the possibility of bringing this movement to life in politics, but Eric Zemmour’s adventure in the 2022 presidential election did not meet with the expected success. There is also the RN, and not so much Marine Le Pen as this figure, Jordan Bardella, who “was not even born at the time of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s ‘point of detail’, in 1987”. It is this French youth that Marylou Magal and Nicolas Massol, journalists at L’Express and at Release, In The far right, new generation (Denoël), of which we publish here some extracts.
September 2013, in front of the Clignancourt campus, in the north of Paris. It’s back to school for students. Older, political activists spot easy prey, like this young dark-haired man who arrives from Seine-Saint-Denis to begin a geography degree without conviction. A young man from the UNI approaches him: “We are a right-wing union, we defend French identity.” An Unef activist disputes her target: “Don’t take his leaflet, he’s a fascist!” The newcomer quickly makes his choice. He stares at the student on the left: “If that’s it, I’ll take his leaflet.” Pierre Gentillet has just met Jordan Bardella, 18, who has just renewed his National Front card.
A first Trotskyist “big brother”
Although he still campaigns in 93, where he became departmental secretary of the FN in 2014, Bardella very quickly understood, as a young Rastignac, that it is in Paris that one makes a career. He goes less and less to the geography faculty at Porte de Clignancourt, more and more to the FN headquarters in Nanterre, always worn out like a politician, always ready to be of service. […] He too began to make a living from politics, serving as an occasional parliamentary assistant to an MEP. He is not 20 years old, has never worked in his life, but he has just met his first mentor, Aurélien Legrand, the new right-hand man of Wallerand de Saint-Just, the strong man of the FN in Ile-de-France. -France. Legrand, thirteen years older than Bardella, has just joined the far-right party after spending a couple of years on the far left. History professor, seasoned activist, he is full of ideas, writes notes for Marine Le Pen, masters communications and has this typically Trotskyist way of arguing about everything and being able to link each subject to politics. Bardella is full of peepers.
Legrand takes him under his wing. He appreciates this nice, hard-working, sometimes brilliant young guy, who certainly watches a little too much of Soral’s videos on virility, but has the merit of being neither a redneck nor an uptight Catholic. To think more or less correctly, in the nails of philippotism, the social-sovereignist line of demonization which is making the party’s heyday. Both share a love of elegant clothes, together scrutinizing the latest James Bond to detect the brand of Daniel Craig’s costume, which they then try to find a cheaper replica of in La Vallée Village, in Seine-et-Marne. One day, the eldest takes his fake little brother to the basement of the Town Hall Bazaar and teaches him how to shine his shoes in the shoe shine department. Another time, Legrand took him through the door of a De Fursac store so that he could finally afford a suit worthy of the name. […]
“Mr. Rooftop”
Although he has begun to create a legend based on his biography – his American first name which betrays his popular ancestry, his mother Atsem and his childhood at the foot of a city – he has earned a very comfortable living since his election, at 20 years, on the regional council of Ile-de-France, which he combines with missions for the party. This distances him from his little comrades who spend their evenings drinking hot beer in cellars that smell like feet while he prefers rooftops where he arrives well dressed to order cocktails – a habit which has also earned him the friendly nickname “Mr. Rooftop” among his peers.
Friends ? He hardly has any. At least not his age. A few months earlier, for his 22nd birthday, his girlfriend at the time, Kerridwen Chatillon, made a frantic phone call to Garen Shnorhokian. A few days before the birthday party, she can’t find any real friends to invite… “He has friends outside of politics?” […]
In the meantime, he found a new mentor: Philippe Vardon, the one who wrote the declaration of war for Génération Identitaire and who helped set up the “Poitiers 732” operation. Vardon rose in rank, joined the national office of the FN at the Lille congress and played the role of Bardella’s unofficial campaign director. Quite a symbol: Legrand, the former NPA, elected professor of Ile-de-France, sovereignist and quite Europhobic, leaves his place to the Niçois, the identitarian who likes to define the roots of individuals through three inseparable levels: the region, the nation and Europe, the three identity homelands which, logically, defeat any desire for assimilation. We can think of an Islam of France but, as Bardella would say a few years later on a set, “Islam did not grow in the Normandy meadows”… Vardon? He’s a punchline specialist, and his foal loves TV studios, which, it must be said, do him well. “The generation of those who die for a sideways look, a refused cigarette”: first appearing in GI’s baptismal video, this slogan has become one of Bardella’s shocking phrases, repeated throughout broadcasts and broadcasts. speech. […]
“If we finish second, it calls everything into question”
End of 2018. The ringing of his phone startles him. The name that appears on the screen stops worrying him. On the line, Marine Le Pen. “I would like to suggest that you take the lead in the European elections.” Jordan Bardella remains perplexed. He is 23 years old and his cheeks are red. He barely takes the time to think, asks for one or two pieces of advice. To Jean-Lin Lacapelle, in particular, history of the Front, who told him to go for it. Marine Le Pen warns him: he has no room for error. This election must be the stepping stone for the candidate defeated in 2017 to establish herself as Emmanuel Macron’s first competitor. “If we finish second, that calls everything into question,” says the Pas-de-Calais MP. […] A good student, Jordan Bardella is diligent. For each media preparation, it arrives with files in hand and well combed. The young candidate understood the rules. It doesn’t take up too much space, doesn’t require much. Although, of course, if there was still a small eligible place for her friend Mathilde Androuët, that would be very kind… Request granted.
For the rest, it is essentially Marine Le Pen who completes the list. […] At a Parisian table, Jordan Bardella meets Pierre-Romain Thionnet. The current flows. They begin to communicate via Telegram messaging. Spontaneously, Pierre-Romain sends cards, notes, passages from books that seem interesting to him. Jordan is amazed. He who is reluctant to put his nose into a book and prefers the light of TV sets to the corners of libraries is enchanted. Now he has just found a partner capable of summarizing 300 pages for him in two sheets, which he just has to ingest. To his communications advisor at the time, he exulted: “Can you imagine, I just found a guy capable of giving me a profile in two days!” Bardella informs Pierre-Romain: if he is elected MEP, he would like the latter to be his parliamentary assistant. Deal. […] On May 26, 2019, Jordan Bardella’s list came first, ahead of the list of the presidential majority, with 23.34% of the votes.
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