In the 1980s, La Table Ronde published a series of portrait books of popular politicians. Signed by journalists, they all had the same, falsely mysterious title. A stranger named Chirac, A stranger named Chevènementand so on. Sitting in a bistro, an old friend of Marine Le Pen spontaneously mentions these works when asked about that of Jordan Bardella.
“They were objects of popularization, intended to ensure the promotion of so-and-so, remembers this elected official who, like almost all members of the National Rally, did not have access to his leader's prose before publication. There, it's going to be the same, we're not going to learn anything. This is a non-event. The event is that a 29-year-old man publishes his Memoirs…”
The RN launches its Matignon “bis” plan
For the president of the RN, that is enough. After months of rumors and tumult in the publishing world, 100,000 copies of his first book, entitled What I'm looking for and stamped Fayard, were exhibited yesterday in bookstores, train stations, airports and supermarkets across the country. Onlookers will find it difficult to ignore: the format is imposing, the 324 pages are thick, the satin cover features a Jordan Bardella in black and white, while the fourth shows him with his back to the Acropolis, smartphone screwed to his ear.
In his conclusion, the MEP specifies that he chose this image “because this hill is beautiful and big, and all the founding places of Greece will constantly remind us of the origins of our democracy.” The Napoleonic allusion of the title is no less transparent, since the full quotation from the Emperor from which these four words come appears in the incipit.
Little questioning
Finesse is not the objective of the leader of the far right. Is she ever? The man is above all a communicator who has understood the times well. No need to be original or sagacious, the event is essential. Catalog of reflections announced from summer 2022, What I'm looking for aims first of all to put its author back at the center of the game, in the media spotlight after a rather discreet post-legislative summer. “He made a series of strikes and suddenly, in the last election, he didn't make a strike. notes privately Marion Maréchal, returned to the bosom of the RN after the European elections. At the time, it was hard, he was in a state of questioning. »
No need for too much. If he notes that “fears still remain” with regard to frontism, Jordan Bardella believes that Matignon escaped him because of “bad faith” of his adversaries; of the “Holy Media Inquisition” launched against Sébastien Chenu after his ” error ” on dual nationals; of the “hazardous candidates” who have made comments of a racist or anti-Semitic nature; or even the opposition of a handful of RN deputies to the inclusion of the right to abortion in the Constitution. There is never any question of unpreparedness or amateurism. “Not a single one of the ministers we saw during the legislative elections has said to me since, 'Bardella, we don't want it'”, reassures an advisor of the almost thirty-year-old.
The fact remains that the latter chose to stage this true-false mea culpa. No doubt he considers it sufficient for his (electors). The first part of the book, devoted to the long electoral sequence of 2024, was completed during the summer break. It was first necessary to resolve the crisis with Lise Boëll. Historical editor of Éric Zemmour and Philippe de Villiers, the new boss of Fayard had tried, in the spring, to convince Jordan Bardella to discuss his heterosexual relationships… in order to deny the rumors of homosexuality concerning him. From then on, he no longer wanted to work with the woman whose character he had little taste for. The project therefore landed in the hands of the writer Nicolas Diat, pillar of the Hachette Livre subsidiary, close to conservative Catholic circles and trusted man of Vincent Bolloré.
Sébastien Chenu and Jean-Philippe Tanguy, Le Pen’s regents
With the help of his advice (and a few faithful like Pierre-Romain Thionnet), the Ile-de-France resident increased the number of writing sessions from July to October. They took place in discreet cafes in Paris but also in Strasbourg, so that the elected official could go to the European Parliament. And, above all, ensure a publication date in the fall and not after the end-of-year holidays, as some may have anticipated. Very little consulted, with the exception of relatives like Kévin Pfeffer or Alexandre Loubet, the RN deputies were content to wait.
“We have nothing to say about the book to defend you,” said Jean-Philippe Tanguy one day to Jordan Bardella, who simply replied: “You can say that I am going to be published by Fayard and that the left wants to censor me. » Par “the left”we must hear the railway unions having expressed their refusal to see an advertising campaign in its favor deployed in SNCF stations.
Talk above all to the right
Frustrated by these hackneyed elements of language, the pundits of the RN group in the National Assembly note, however, that the calendar suits Marine Le Pen. “This is very good news, one of them rejoices, it allows us to talk less about his trial [des assistants parlementaires européens du Front national] but also the budget. » Described as a « rock star »the elected official from Pas-de-Calais – to whom Jordan Bardella owes her meteoric rise – is entitled to the most syrupy pieces of the work. “Her magnetism leaves no one indifferent when she enters a room. Marine Le Pen radiates, can we read. Time seems to stop, people freeze, conversations stop, eyes converge on her. »
While hammering home this loyalty, the native of Seine-Saint-Denis attempts to sketch his own line, a patchwork of suburban stigmata, ideological influences, television references and digital culture. Nothing he hasn't discussed more or less publicly in the past. It goes from Charles de Gaulle to the show Zemmour & Naulleau passing through The Lost Territories of the Republicthe Ina archives and the common readings of the nationalist youth who awakened, with him, in the 2010s. Michel Houellebecq, the anti-liberal philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa, the identity journalist Laurent Obertone or “the theoretician of the great replacement Renaud Camus for the most spirited”euphemizes Jordan Bardella.
If “marinism” is his matrix, he speaks above all to his right, devoting numerous pages to security, identity, immigration “unbridled” et “anarchic”, castigating the “disassimilation” at work according to him in the country. “At the crossroads, France has never stopped […] to say his last word”, he closes a chapter, thus combining two Zemmourist allusions in a short sentence. The left and journalists are, conversely, the subject of his harshest – and least stringent – words. Accusing LFI of reproducing the “codes of Islamism to seduce part of the suburbs”Jordan Bardella more generally castigates the left and its “adulterated egalitarianism”, “woke ideology […] established as a counter-religion » and expressed, he writes, through the “activism” anti-Christian attitude towards the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in July.
Sébastien Chenu and Jean-Philippe Tanguy, Le Pen’s regents
A reactionary speech that Marion Maréchal would not deny but which is not that of Marine Le Pen, who stuck to regretting “somewhat heavy-handed provocative elements” in the columns of La Tribune Sunday. His foal knows which electorate he is addressing. Now, this one loves to bang on the “media Parisianism”including when Jordan Bardella specifically targets colleagues from Liberation with a good dose of acrimony and spirit of revenge.
Does all this make a bestseller? This is the objective of Vincent Bolloré, who will put his media sphere – CNews, Europe 1, The Sunday Journal – on a war footing to give maximum coverage to the work before Christmas. The cover was printed in 155,000 copies (including books already in stores) for possible reprints. Beyond this political and commercial project, does the author say more about what motivates him?
“He’s someone who takes few risks,” admits knowledge. By nature, by tactics or, it is possible, by lack of things to add, Jordan Bardella does not deviate from his usual, very controlled storytelling. “To be presidential, you must have released your 300-page book, summarizes someone close to Marine Le Pen. No one cares about the content. This will no longer matter if Marine is sentenced to ineligibility. Bardella is going up, and that's very good for him, because he doesn't have the Le Pen name. » Maybe in the 2020s, remaining unknown is enough.
