The new leader of the AN party opens the door to negotiations with the traditional French right
Jordan Bardella (27 years old), the new president of the National Assembly (AN, far right), ends a generational rupture with the sullen legacy of founding patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was expelled by his daughter Marine from his party.
Historically, AN has had to pull off Le Pen’s nickname scandals. Between 1969 and 1986, 1989 and 1993, Jean-Marie Le Pen on several occasions launched startling provocations about the occupation and Nazi crematoriums, accompanied by racist statements and insults of all kinds, which Justice condemned for this type of reason. .: “Apology for war crimes and appeals for crimes against humanity”, “incitement to hatred and racial discrimination”, “public insults”… Realizing that this family heritage isolated her in the national political scene, Marine Le Pen began moving away and ended up being expelled His father is from the old National Front, and changed his party’s name to transform it into the current AN party.
However, the surname Le Pen was still a very difficult hurdle. All leaders of the historical right, Giscard, Chirac, SarkozyI have always denounced Le Pen’s racism. Faced with this evidence, Marine Le Pen decided to take a historical turn. After legislative elections last June, the former chairwoman of the AN party decided to “turn the page”, finally breaking with the political heritage of her own title, offering the presidency of her party to her youngest staffer, Jordan Bardella.
With the support of Putin
Bardella was elected president of the new National League, last Saturday, and was not born when Le Pen Sr. advocated the racist and neo-Nazi streak, funded in part by Vladimir Putin. After breaking the umbilical cord with this political legacy, associated with Le Pen’s nickname, Bardella initiated a generational change that provides views of the far right unprecedented even today.
For half a century, the traditional right has long considered Le Pen an unlikely political enemy. Buried in Le Pen’s era, Bardella could experience shifting engineering alliances with the traditional right-wing, orphan Nicolas Sarkozy.
Historically, the far-right in Le Pen’s era was already voted out by 30 or 35% of French workers. But the aggressive racism that characterized the old National Front prevented the transformation of social capital into an effective political weapon. The presidential elections that pitted Marine Le Pen against Emmanuel Macron, in April and May, and the legislative elections in June, confirmed that 40% of workers and the most modest social classes vote for the traditional right.
Jordan Bardella, MEP since 2019, could try alliances with the traditional right, orphaned Sarkozy
With 89 deputies out of 577 deputies in the National Assembly, the party headed by Bardella is the main opposition political force. To his right, Eric Zemmour’s Reconquista formation is just a small ultra group. Among the Republicans (LR, traditional right, Sarkozy’s party) there are many figures sensitive to possible agreements with the AN, in sensitive areas such as immigration or the defense of national interests in the EU.
At 27, a member of the European Parliament since 2019, Jordan Bardella has no experience, but that relative virginity has an exceptional advantage: his generational break ‘liberates’ the French far-right, always faithful to its core principles, from a sullen personal heritage. Jean Marie Lieben.
