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Report alleges France’s far-right leader had racist Twitter account

France’s far-right leader Jordan Bardella on Thursday rejected accusations in a television report that he used an anonymous Twitter account to share racist messages when he was a local elected official.

The allegations against the 28-year-old president of the National Rally (RN) party were made in an investigative report to be broadcast on the France 2 channel on Thursday evening, a copy of which AFP obtained and watched.

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In the report, four sources — three of which are anonymous — claim that from 2015 to 2017, Bardella used the pseudonym “RepNat du Gaito” on Twitter, now X, to share racist messages and celebrate Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of the RN’s ancestor party the National Front (FN).

The last post of that account, dated February 2017, is an obscene image mocking Theo Luhaka, a young black man who suffered severe anal injuries from a police baton that year, in an assault for which three policemen are now on trial.

Bardella in the report denied this, telling France 2: “I am sorry to disappoint you but I only have one Twitter account. I will not stand by comments I did not make.”

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RN spokesman Victor Chabert on Wednesday defended Bardella on X, in a reply to a France 2 journalist who posted part of the report on the controversial Twitter posts to promote it.

“You will be prosecuted and a formal notice has been sent to France Televisions,” the group that owns France 2, Chabert wrote.

A source close to the RN told AFP that an ex-assistant of Florian Philippot, a former vice-president of the RN who has since left the party, was the person behind the “RepNat du Gaito” Twitter handle.

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Bardella was formally elected to lead the RN in 2022, replacing three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen after more than a decade at the head of the party.

He has also been a member of the European Parliament since 2019.

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Le Pen, who is widely expected to run in the 2027 presidential elections and seek to make Bardella prime minister if she wins — has long sought to distance herself from the openly racist and anti-Semitic reputation of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Bardella too likes to emphasise that he is from a new generation of nationalists with little in common with Jean-Marie Le Pen.

President Emmanuel Macron — who beat Le Pen in 2017 and 2022 — in a rare press conference on Tuesday adopted some of the far right’s themes in an apparent bid to stem the RN’s rising popularity.

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The RN looks set to top the vote in June’s European Parliament election.

© Agence France-Presse

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