When Jordan Bardella, the polished young face of France’s far right, announced that he now supports the legalization of brothels, he framed it as a moral awakening. According to Bardella, forcing sex workers to operate in secrecy is “hypocritical.” At last, hypocrisy has been spotted, not in racism, not in authoritarian nostalgia, not in the selective obsession with “law and order,” but in the fact that prostitution exists whether politicians like it or not. One can almost hear the sound of a halo being carefully adjusted above his head.
To be clear, the question of how societies regulate sex work is complex, emotionally charged, and deserving of serious debate. But when a figure whose political movement has spent decades moralizing about family values, national virtue, and social decay suddenly discovers nuance, scepticism is not only allowed, it is mandatory. Because when the far right says it wants to protect women, history suggests you should check which women, under what conditions, and for whose benefit.
Bardella’s argument is wrapped in a surprisingly liberal ribbon. Legalize brothels, he says, and sex workers will be safer, healthier, and less exploited. This is a language that sounds suspiciously like harm reduction, a concept the far right usually treats as ideological poison. One wonders what happened. Did Bardella wake up one morning struck by empathy? Did a policy paper fall from the heavens? Or did someone finally explain that voters can be both socially conservative and quietly pragmatic when it comes to sex?
Because let us not pretend this is about liberation. The far right has never been particularly interested in expanding autonomy, especially for women whose lives do not fit neatly into approved narratives of motherhood and domestic virtue. The same political ecosystem that frets endlessly about declining birth rates, “traditional families,” and the moral collapse of society does not suddenly become a feminist think tank because it discovered that prostitution is inconvenient to ban.
What Bardella is really denouncing is not hypocrisy itself, but inefficient hypocrisy. The problem, apparently, is not that sex is commodified, nor that inequality drives people into vulnerable work, nor that power imbalances exist. The problem is that all this happens untidily, out of sight, without regulation, receipts, or a proper administrative stamp. This is not moral clarity. This is bureaucratic irritation.
There is also something almost charming about the selective outrage. For years, far-right rhetoric has painted immigrants, minorities, and the poor as threats to social order, frequently invoking sexual danger and moral decay. Now, suddenly, sex work is no longer a symptom of societal collapse but an industry in need of transparency. One imagines the same politicians who recoil at a woman wearing a headscarf nodding approvingly at the concept of a well-regulated brothel, provided it flies the right flag and fills out the right forms.
Humour aside, there is a deeper political calculation at work. Supporting legalized brothels allows Bardella to appear modern, pragmatic, even compassionate, without challenging the structural beliefs of his movement. It costs him very little. The people most affected by sex work policy are rarely his core voters, and the proposal conveniently avoids uncomfortable discussions about poverty, migration, or gender inequality. It is reform without redistribution, empathy without introspection.
And of course, calling the current system “hypocritical” is a clever rhetorical trick. It shifts the spotlight away from his own camp’s long-standing contradictions. Hypocrisy, after all, is much easier to diagnose in abstract systems than in personal or ideological motives. It is far harder to explain why a movement obsessed with controlling bodies suddenly wants to regulate, rather than restrict certain ones.
Perhaps Bardella genuinely believes this policy would reduce harm. If so, good. But politics is not therapy, and intentions are less interesting than patterns. When moral guardians discover flexibility only when convenience demands it, suspicion is healthy. Hypocrisy is not cured by repackaging it in a cleaner, more market-friendly format.
So yes, one really does have to wonder about the hypocrisy of Bardella’s motives. Not because the idea itself is unspeakable, but because of who is speaking, and when. In politics, as in life, sudden enlightenment often arrives precisely at the moment it becomes useful. And nothing is more traditional than that.
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