French far-right leader Bardella refutes anti-Semitism allegations
Mediapart's explosive report comes a day after France's National Rally party secures a record number of Senate seats.
The president of France’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally or RN), Jordan Bardella, has denied allegations of anti-Semitism.
Bardella’s refutation on Monday followed the publication of a report by the Mediapart outlet alleging that the politician sent anti-Semitic private messages a decade ago. The report emerged shortly after RN secured a record 14 seats in the Senate, confirming its strong prospects ahead of presidential elections early next year.
“I formally dispute the accusations against me by Mediapart, which attributes to me deranged and anti-Semitic remarks that I supposedly made when I was a minor. These are obviously blatant forgeries,” Bardella wrote on social media.
Mediapart wrote that in a chat, Bardella had said: “The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so.”