How Jordan Bardella has helped give the far right an acceptable face in France
CNN
At just 28 years old, Jordan Bardella has led the French far right to a landslide victory and humiliated President Emmanuel Macron’s camp in the European Parliament elections. He’s poised to become the next prime minister if the French president loses his gamble in the upcoming snap election. But who is far-right doyenne Marine Le Pen’s slick protégé?
At just 28 years old, Jordan Bardella has led the French far right to a landslide victory and humiliated President Emmanuel Macron’s camp in the European Parliament elections. He’s poised to become the next prime minister if the French president loses his gamble in the upcoming snap election. But who is far-right doyenne Marine Le Pen’s slick protégé? Bardella, the National Rally party leader, grew up an only child in social housing in Seine-Saint-Denis, a working-class suburb in the northeast of Paris. He joined the far-right party at 16 and then briefly attended the prestigious Sorbonne university in the French capital before dropping out. “Like many families, many people who live in these neighborhoods, I was confronted with violence, and my mother struggled to make ends meet. The truth is that the sense of urgency that led me into politics has never left me,” Bardella told public television channel France 2 in April. In clinching 31% of the vote in the European parliamentary election – a record score for the National Rally – he trounced Macron’s centrist party by a wide margin. “A wind of hope is sweeping across France and it’s only just the beginning,” he said Sunday, as he urged Macron to call a national election – a bluff the president called, with the first round of voting to take place June 30. Le Pen handpicked the young politician to head the party in 2022 – ending a 50-year-rule by the Le Pen dynasty – and bring a fresh boost to the French populist right.
An Israeli airstrike on a multi-story building in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people, relief officials said, as the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders in the area – where it is mounting a major offensive.
If his first term in the White House is any indication, President-elect Donald Trump is likely to keep the Middle East high on his agenda.
Rights groups say journalist Reza Valizadeh has been detained, amid heightened tensions between the United States and Iran.
A female student stripped to her underwear outside her university in Iran in what some student and rights groups say was a protest against the country’s strict Islamic dress code.
Israel is at a “high level of readiness” for a response from Iran, an Israeli military source told CNN, as US officials visited the Middle East for a renewed push to resolve the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. Follow live updates.