The new face of a fifty-year-old party, Jordan Bardella is once again head of the National Rally list for the European elections in June. His journey and his meteoric rise have given hope to an activist generation who until then saw no salvation in this aging party. For his second campaign, he chose to surround himself with a young team, relatively unknown profiles. Very annoyed by the leaks of information in the press, the frontist warned: no offences, no deviations will be tolerated. “We are in commando mode,” assures one of the members of his team, on the verge of classifying his “secret-defense” exchanges.
Around Jordan Bardella there remain a few faithful to his activist past. His parliamentary assistants François Paradol and Donatien Véret are among them. Frontists since their young years, they accompanied the MEP in his progress. The first is also RN regional advisor for the Ile-de-France region. His chief of staff, Arthur Perrier, is an afterthought. At 22, he rubbed shoulders with Zemmourist circles before joining the president of the RN. Alexandre Loubet, his campaign director, is a recent supporter. A former traveling companion of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, he joined Marine Le Pen after the 2017 presidential election and was elected deputy in 2022. He knows the president of the party from their activist years, and evenings shared in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. His press advisor, Victor Chabert, comes from the other side of the barrier. Journalist until 2022, he followed the frontist campaign for Europe 1 before joining the RN after the presidential election.
So much for the official cabinet. Other personalities make up its ecosystem. Her MEP colleague, Mathilde Androuët, is part of the early gang, that of the militant evenings, which evolved in the party’s organizational chart. The director of the RNJ, the party’s youth movement, too. Pierre-Romain Thionnet, former parliamentary assistant to Jordan Bardella and former secretary general of the identity union La Cocarde, continues to have the attentive ear of the MEP and provides him with some fact sheets on occasion.
Most are under thirty, have made the question of identity the basis of their commitment and are banking on Jordan Bardella to bring together the new generation at the National Rally. He often repeats it: “All roads lead to the RN.” And hopes to become the new herald of this youth coming from the right and the extreme right, carried by the same civilizational and anti-immigration fight.