Between the “difficult ends of the month” with her mother and life in the chic neighborhoods of Val-d’Oise with her father, Jordan Bardella has two family stories. She serves her political fight.
Without ever saying too much, the president of the National Rally sometimes returns to his childhood in Drancy, in Seine-Saint-Denis and to his family. Perhaps he does not want to reveal everything before the release of his autobiography, scheduled for next September, but perhaps he also wants to remain discreet on this subject, to consolidate the image of the young son of immigrants who grew up in a city and who, through hard work and determination, rose to the gates of power. What is certain is that the leader of the RN has a sense of storytelling.
Several times, he mentioned “the difficult ends of the month” and “the miserable wage” of his mother, but also the “wandering” situation of his family in Italy, “welcomed by France”. Jordan Bardella has made this family history a credo, always useful when he evokes the questions of immigration, of integration which are at the heart of his political program.
The far-right politician remains rather evasive, however, when it comes to his father and his Algerian origins. It must be said that within the National Rally, the subject must not be raised very often. If Jordan Bardella is, as he likes to repeat during his meetings, “75% Italian”, he never explains where the remaining “25%” come from.
In fact, we must look at the politician’s little-known paternal side. His father, Olivier Bardella, was born in Montreuil in 1968 to an Italian mother and a Franco-Algerian father. According to Young Africa who investigated the family background of Jordan Bardella, the paternal great-grandfather of the president of the RN, Mohand Séghir Mada, is a Kabyle Algerian who settled in France, in Villeurbanne in the 1930s and married Denis Annette Jack, the great-grandmother of Jordan Bardella. Together they had four children, including Réjane, the mother of Olivier Bardella and therefore the grandmother of the one who aspires to become Prime Minister, in the event of a large victory of the RN in the second ballot of the legislative elections of July 7.
A family life he rarely talks about
About his mother, Jordan Bardella is more talkative. The politician’s mother is called Luisa Bertilli-Mota, she was born in Turin in 1962. A year after his birth, his parents Iolanda Benedetto and Severino Bertilli-Motta left Nichelino, a suburb of the capital of Piedmont for the Île-de-France. In Saint-Denis, Luisa met Olivier Bardella, then the boss of an SME specializing in vending machines for drinks. She is a specialized territorial agent for nursery schools (Atsem). In 1995, the couple lived in Drancy and gave birth to Jordan Bardella but they ended up separating in 1997, Jordan Bardella and his mother ended up in a council estate and the little boy grew up tossed between his two parents.
It was in this context that Jordan Bardella grew up in a working-class environment, during the week at his mother’s house but every Wednesday and on weekends, the young Jordan left his housing project in the 93rd arrondissement for the affluent neighborhoods of Montmorency in Val-d’Oise where he found his father, according to his own words. With him, he enjoyed a more privileged youth, he attended private Catholic schools, had a paid apartment, and made a long trip to the United States. At 17 when he joined the National Front, he only spoke about part of his family origins, and his childhood in the Gabriel Péri housing project in Drancy. His parents, even separated, accompanied him to meetings but preferred to stay in the background.