"Jordan who?" asks Giampiero Tolardo, the mayor of Nichelino. This Piedmont town, near the Fiat factories on the outskirts of Turin in northern Italy, pushed its way into the fields between the 1950s and 1970s, in order to house the car manufacturer's workers. "Nichelino is often referred to as 'the town of nowhere', and that's still its nickname," said the mayor, a doctor in civilian life. One day it may be known as something else: the place where Jordan Bardella's family is from.

"Bar-del-la?" A member of the center-left Democratic Party, the mayor was unaware of the president of France's far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party. Bardella is the party's lead candidate for the European elections on June 9, and the RN is dominating the polls. Tolardo grabbed his phone and called the registry office in his commune. A few minutes later, a name came up: Severino Bertelli-Motta, born on December 23, 1934 – Bardella's maternal grandfather. Severino married Iolanda Benedetto – a local surname. The couple lived in Nichelino before emigrating to the Paris suburbs in 1963 with two children: Daniela and Luisa, the RN leader's mother. Two more were born in France.

Bardella's origins lie in this working-class suburb of Turin where his mother was born on April 5, 1962, and it's a lineage he's determined not to erase. Today, one adult in four in France has at least one ancestor from an immigrant background, and even the far right is no longer afraid to mention foreign family origins. It sees this as a way for the electorate to see a reflection of themselves. Republican Nicolas Sarkozy used to say: "I'm a little Frenchman with mixed blood." Bardella has repeatedly said at his rallies: "Venu d'ailleurs, devenu d'ici," ("From elsewhere, from here now"). he refers to himself as "75% Italian".

Three of his four grandparents were born in the country often described as a European political laboratory, the originator of Fascism, Eurocommunism, the Cathodic populism of Berlusconi, the left-wing populism of the 5-Star Movement, and now Melonism, a national-conservatism with post-fascist roots that divides even political scientists. MEP Bardella, meanwhile, claims to be a friend and ally of Matteo Salvini, leader of the League (formerly the Northern League), a far-right party that was once regionalist, and is now identitarian, xenophobic and a scourge of Brussels standards, where the League and RN sit together in the parliament.

'Popular markers'

At a rally organized by their parliamentary group in Florence in December 2023, Bardella made a point of speaking in Italian. "Let's just say I gabble," the 28-year-old MEP told Le Monde. In fact, he has a rudimentary grasp of the language, enough at any rate to "order pasta all'amatriciana in a restaurant," he said, laughing modestly. This was a rare confidence extracted from the RN leader, because, he explained, he doesn't want to spoil his forthcoming book. "At home, we spoke French," he has said in his public appearances.

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