“What I'm looking for”, a book signed by the president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella, appears on Saturday, mixing a campaign story, childhood memories and political considerations, and must be the subject of an intense promotional campaign, in particular by the media of the Bolloré group, owner of the book's publisher, Fayard.
“This book is neither an essay nor a program: it is the reflection of my existence”: from the start of some 320 pages which must be printed in more than 150,000 copies, the head of the National Rally intends to mark yet another milestone of a meteoric political rise.
Unprecedented, it is the prestigious publisher Fayard which publishes “Ce que je recherche”, a first for the Lepénist extreme right until then confined to confidential publications.
But the flagship of publishing has since passed under the flag of the Bolloré group, whose media channels must support the release of the book in the coming days. On Friday, Fayard also announced an appeal against the subsidiary of SNCF and RATP which refused the advertising campaign planned in the stations.
The promotion must begin this weekend in Lot-et-Garonne, with a meeting followed by a signing session, a prelude to a signing tour, at a time when the National Rally is mired in its trial in the affair of MEPs' assistants, for which Jordan Bardella is not targeted.
Throughout “What I'm looking for” – a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte in the epigraph immediately responds, “greatness” – the far-right leader takes care to trace his political furrow.
With, as a model, Nicolas Sarkozy's victorious presidential campaign of 2007 and “the idea of bringing together French people from the working class and part of the conservative bourgeoisie in the same spirit”.
From then on, “future victories will require the unity of the patriotic camp, through an ability to bring together the orphans of a more Orleanist right”, believes the president of the RN in a speech close to the “union of the rights” advocated by Eric Zemmour, whose 2022 slogan he also apes, “So that France remains France”: for Mr. Bardella, this becomes “Our ardent desire to remain France”.
– French culture –
The work focuses on a youth in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), “a few years before drug dealers replaced children” in play parks.
Jordan Bardella assures that, when his grandparents arrived from Italy in the 1960s, this northern suburb of Paris was a “paradise”, guided by the “mutual aid and solidarity” of his “European” families. , North African, African”, around “a small square in the heart of the city (which) sheltered a large fountain, like a halo of rest and tranquility”.
But, when he began volunteering in the 2010s within a literacy association for foreigners, notably “Pakistanis, Afghans, West Africans”, Jordan Bardella drew a conclusion: “I realized how difficult it was to reconcile cultural worlds that seemed so distant. If the integration (of his grandparents) worked so well, it was because it was European.
Of this “French culture”, Jordan Bardella draws up the pantheon. Charles de Gaulle, André Malraux, François Mitterrand, Victor Hugo: “All of them, before declaiming (their) great speeches, will have sought greatness”.
Raymond Aron, Pierre Soulages, but also “Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, France Gall, Johnny Hallyday, Charles Aznavour” still meet there.
– “I am convinced of it” –
The one who claims, at the time he joined the National Front at the age of 16, to be ignorant of “everything about its history, its founders and even Jean-Marie Le Pen”, also devotes an entire chapter – the last – to Marine Le Pen.
“I owe him a significant part of what I have become,” he writes, mocking those who “have tried to shake up our tandem, seeking to fuel fantasized enmities, even rivalry.”
During a boat trip off the coast of Fort Brégançon, residence of the Presidents of the Republic, Jordan Bardella says he asked his boss: “Do you think you will be there one day?”
“The look in the distance, his response, simple, determined, beautiful: +I’m convinced of it+.”
She gave him the same answer a few days before the second round of the legislative elections in July regarding the young man's chances of accessing Matignon.
