Paris ¨C Jordan Bardella, 28, is the new face of the far right in France. Measured, clean-cut and raised in the hardscrabble northern suburbs of Paris, he laces his speeches with references to Victor Hugo and believes that ¡°no country succeeds by denying or being ashamed of itself.¡±
That phrase, at a recent rally in the eastern town of Montb¨¦liard, brought a chorus of ¡°Jordan! Jordan!¡± from a crowd that had lined up for hours to see him. Cries of ¡°Patrie¡± ¡ª homeland ¡ª filled the hall. Bardellamania is in the air.
Bardella, the son of Italian immigrants and a college dropout who joined the National Front party (now National Rally) at 16, is the protege of Marine Le Pen, the perennial hard-right French presidential candidate. Moderate in tone if not content, he is also the personification of the normalization ¡ª or banalization ¡ª of a party once seen as a quasi-fascist threat to the Republic.
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