The DJ almost arrived on time. It’s tradition. At the National Rally, activists are entitled to their dose of slightly old-fashioned songs before the start of each meeting. The pianist’s groupie was remixed for the occasion, and it upsets this former foreign legion, frontist for 30 years, who came to attend the launch of the far-right party’s European campaign in Marseille. The volume is pushed to the limit. Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen enter to a kind of electro music and walk through the crowd surrounded by a horde of journalists.
These elections are the second round for the young prodigy of the far right, Jordan Bardella, already head of the party’s list in the 2019 European elections. This time, the polls are around 30%, the best score ever achieved in a European vote by the RN. Marine Le Pen entrusted her foal with the mission of surpassing this score. At 28, the MEP is walking on water, comforted by a new media dimension acquired by occupying television sets, and by the indulgent treatment reserved for him by Macronie, who seems to prefer her offspring to Marine Le Pen. policy.
Reassure at all costs
For this new campaign, Jordan Bardella has only one word in mind: reassure. And what reassures the French today? The right, obviously. For months, he has been multiplying more or less crude signals. His ambition: to attract the Zemmourist electorate of 2022, and even that of Nicolas Sarkozy 2007. In his videos published on social networks, he slips in a work by the former President of the Republic. In his discussions with the press, he quotes the economist François Lenglet and speaks of “an open economy”. To business owners, he extols the merits of social advancement, expresses his pride in seeing that the world’s biggest fortune, LVMH, is French. Right-wing voters, believe it! No reason to be afraid of the National Rally.
The RN, pro Frexit, as the presidential camp says? Great gods, no! This story is far behind him. The frontists today, as in 2019, are only considering transitioning quietly towards a “European alliance of Nations”. To do this, it will be enough to renegotiate the treaties. No more Europhobic statements likely to frighten new sympathizers. And then, the party is not ready for a change of heart. “I am reasonable, I am pragmatic,” Bardella claims today. “I follow the path of reason in the face of extremes” he even dares, smiling mockingly. The heir of Jean-Marie Le Pen, champion of the camp of reason?
Lots of marketing and little new stuff
Reassuring is not rocket science. The recipe is even simple and has a well-known name: marketing. On February 29, Quai de Grenelle, Jordan Bardella unveils, Powerpoint in support, his new strategy, the so-called tricolor strategy, “developed by Marine and myself”, he specifies. A classification of the different red lines, or not, of future negotiations at European level. “Common sense” measures, a term that is as practical as it is meaningless, are validated in green. The Erasmus program and industrial or scientific cooperation are thus approved by the party. The Schengen area or the financing of Frontex will have to be the subject of new negotiations, and are therefore placed in the orange file. As for the management of immigration, diplomacy, defense or energy sovereignty, these are red lines for the RN, which affect the “vital interests of the nation”. The frontist program of 2019, all in all, equipped with a new soothing packaging and sold with education.
The RN’s vision of Europe remains the same: setting up an alternative model of cooperation, based on a rewriting of the treaties. “We want to define a new treaty, which will be one of cooperation between nations,” assures Bardella. The treaty in question has not yet been drafted and will not be drafted by the European elections on June 9. Furthermore, to modify the treaties, it is necessary to organize a “convention”, with the agreement of European leaders. “But yes, they will agree, sweeps the frontist. When you have opinion and the people on your side, everything is possible.” And above all, remember: “Our desire is to change everything without destroying anything.”
Exfoliate irritants
The most important thing is to erase the irritants. On more sensitive subjects, Jordan Bardella continues with empty formulas and claims, hands clasped in a sign of appeasement: “We have to find the right balance.” On ecology? Certainly it is “one of the great challenges of his generation”, so here is the position: “I refute any form of fanaticism and think that the climate and environmental challenge must be approached calmly.” On the management of relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, while Macronie portrays the RN as Putin’s agent? “The question is what attitude we adopt. The first is to keep calm and composure.” To his Macronist opponents: “Put a little cold water on your face, everything will be fine.”
Before his voters in Marseille, Jordan Bardella therefore presents his reassuring vision of alternation: “It is possible for us to do otherwise: with common sense, respect for people, a sense of national unity and the common good.” But don’t hesitate, however, to recycle old-fashioned formulas: “Faced with continuity in the worst, we are the promise of change. Faced with the camp of renunciation, we are that of French power.” Or again: “We bear neither the defeatism of those who want to isolate France, nor the angelism of those who approve of everything without ever rebelling.” The Marseille city, this Sunday, saw the birth of a new “at the same time”. This is frontist, borrows its language elements from Macronie and has as a corollary a lack of ideological consistency. And it’s Jordan Bardella who sums it up best: “The ‘at the same time’ has become a whole and its opposite.”
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