“Jordan who?” » Giampiero Tolardo, the mayor of Nichelino, opens his eyes wide. This town in Piedmont, neighboring the Fiat factories in the suburbs of Turin, is an old dormitory town, pushed at full speed into the fields to house the car manufacturer’s workers between the 1950s and 1970s. “It is often said of Nichelino that it was “the city of nowhere”, that is still its nickname”, specifies the mayor, a doctor in civilian life. He doesn’t know that she risks one day becoming part of the legend of a certain Jordan Bardella…
“Bar-del-la?” » Member of the Democratic Party (center left), the elected official, with mid-length hair and a checked jacket, does not know the head of the list of the French far right, which, on the eve of the European elections of June 9, dominates the surveys. Giampiero Tolardo grabs his phone and calls the civil registry services in his town. A few minutes later, a name falls: Severino Bertelli-Motta, born December 23, 1934. The maternal grandfather of the young president of the National Rally (RN). Severino married Iolanda Benedetto – a local name. The couple lived in Nichelino before emigrating, in 1963, to the Paris suburbs with two children (two others were born in France): Daniela, 2 and a half years old at the time, and Luisa, 1 year old, the mother of the leader of the RN.
At the origins of Jordan Bardella, there is therefore this working-class suburb of Turin where his mother was born, on April 5, 1962. A lineage that he does not want to erase. One in four adults in France today has at least one parent with an immigrant background, and the far right itself is no longer afraid to talk about foreign family origins: it sees it as a way of asserting its patriotism, and part of the electorate sees it as a mirror. “I am a little Frenchman with mixed blood”said Nicolas Sarkozy. “Came from elsewhere, become from here”repeats the RN candidate in his meetings, presenting himself as “75% Italian”.
Three of his four grandparents were born in this country often described as a European political laboratory: fascism or Eurocommunism, cathodic populism (Berlusconi), left-wing populism (5 Star Movement), and now “melonism”, a national-conservatism with postfascist roots, which even divides political scientists. MEP Jordan Bardella, he said to himself” friend “ and the“ally” by Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League (formerly Northern League), a far-right party formerly regionalist, today identity-oriented, xenophobic and slayer of the norms of Brussels, where League and RN sit together.
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