Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder and former leader of France’s hard-right National Front party and the father of Marine Le Pen, has passed away at the age of 96.
Le Pen, who had been in a care facility for several weeks, died at midday Tuesday ‘surrounded by his loved ones’, his family said in a statement.
Marine, his youngest daughter, was not with him at the time of his death and learned about it while in Kenya on her way back from a trip to cyclone-affected Mayotte, as reported by French media.
During the 2002 presidential election, Le Pen made waves in the French political scene by unexpectedly making it to the run-off vote against Jacques Chirac, an astonishing rise that many attributed to his blend of populism and charm.
He was known for his fiery rhetoric against immigration and multiculturalism that earned him both staunch supporters and widespread condemnation.
His controversial and inflammatory statements, including Holocaust denial, led to multiple convictions and strained his political alliances.
Le Pen was succeeded as party chief by his daughter, Marine, who eventually booted him out of the party for anti-Semitism.
She has since run for the presidency three times and turned the party, now branded the National Rally, into one of the country’s main political forces.
Jordan Bardella, the current president of the National Rally, paid tribute to the party’s figurehead on X, saying he was a man who ‘always served France, defended its identity and its sovereignty.’
‘Today I think with sadness of his family, his loved ones, and of course of Marine whose mourning must be respected,’ the 29-year-old leader wrote.
Former President of the Front National (FN) Jean-Marie Le Pen (L) and his daughter and successor Marine Le Pen (R) pictured during a May Day rally in Paris, France, May 2014
French former leader and founder of the French hard-right party Front national (FN) Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen, France’s National Front political party founder, embraces his daughter Marine Le Pen, who succeeded him as the party’s leader
French extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen delivers a speech during the National Front party annual meeting at the Palais des Congres in Paris, France, December 14, 1985
A French demonstrator apprears between national newspapers held up with the banner headline ‘NO’ printed over the photo of National Front presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, during a protest march in Paris, April 23, 2002
France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau also responded to news of Le Pen’s death on X, writing that ‘a page in French political history is turning.’
‘Whatever opinion one may have of Jean-Marie Le Pen, he will undoubtedly have left his mark on his era,’ he wrote, sending condolences to Marine Le Pen and her family.
In a statement released by the Elysee Palace, Emmanuel Macron sent his condolences to Le Pen’s family and loved ones.
The statement highlighted that Le Pen had been a presidential candidate five times and described him as ‘a historical figure of the extreme right.’
‘He thus played a role in the public life of our country for almost seventy years, which is now subject to the judgment of History.’
A former paratrooper, Le Pen sent shock waves through France in 2002 when he made it to the second round of the presidential election, which was won by Jacques Chirac.
Le Pen, who seemed more at ease in the role of provocateur than would-be president, appeared as surprised as everyone else by his spectacular breakthrough.
Years later, he boasted that the rise of the far right around Europe showed his ideas had gone mainstream.
Born in the port of La Trinite-sur-Mer in the western Brittany region on June 20, 1928, he was the son of a seamstress and a fisherman.
His father’s fishing boat hit a mine during World War II, killing him – a loss that hit the young Le Pen hard.
Anxious to see action, Le Pen volunteered for service in two wars in French colonies – the First Indochina War (1946-1954) in Vietnam, and then in Algeria (1954-1962).
Shortly after his return from Algeria he entered politics and became France’s youngest MP at 27 when he was elected to parliament in 1956.
But he was unable to resist the lure of the battlefield.
Later that year, he took part in the Franco-British military expedition to seize the Suez Canal, and a few years later joined forces fighting to keep Algeria French.
As in Vietnam, he was infuriated to see France losing its colonial possessions, accusing World War II hero Charles de Gaulle of ‘helping make France small’ by granting Algeria its independence.
A consummate orator and trained lawyer, he tapped into the anger of rightwingers nostalgic for the empire and French settlers forced to flee the North African country.
The eye patch he wore for many years added to his pugilistic air.
Le Pen (R) flanked by French lawyer, and former member of French army parachutist corps, Pierre Menuet (L) and members of National Veterans Front, participates in an old soldiers rally in 1960 in Paris
Jean-Marie Le Pen gives a speech on February 3, 1973, in an unlocated place during the electoral campaign for the legislative elections
Years later Le Pen revealed that he lost his eye driving a tent peg into a hole, and not, as was widely thought, in a brawl.
In 1972, he co-founded the National Front (FN), billed as a ‘national, social and popular’ party, and two years later made his first run for president.
The early years were tumultuous, with his unabashed racism and anti-Semitism striking a raw nerve in a country still haunted by the collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II.
In 1976, a bomb ripped through the Paris apartment building where Le Pen lived with his wife Pierrette and three daughters, slightly injuring six people but sparing the Le Pens.
Eight years later, Pierrette walked out of the marriage, leaving her husband because of his extreme views.
He refused to pay her alimony, saying that ‘if she wants money she can clean’.
Pierrette responded to the comments soon afterwards by posing for Playboy magazine in a French maid’s outfit – a pointed answer to her husband’s advice. The magazine reported selling 250,000 more copies than normal.
About one thousand people demonstrate in Lyons to protest extreme-right Front National candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen’s advance into the runoff for the French presidency 21 April 2002
The FN’s first big electoral breakthrough came in the mid-1980s, when the party won 35 seats in parliament.
But its fortunes fluctuated sharply over the next two decades, partly a result of changes in the election system that favoured big parties.
Le Pen’s message remained unchanged, however, with immigration, the political elite and the European Union all taking a bashing – even though he himself was a member of the European Parliament for over 30 years.
In 2007, Le Pen maintained that Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant who went on to win the presidency, was not sufficiently French to hold the office.
He repeatedly warned that African immigration would ‘submerge’ the country and claimed the Nazi occupation of the northern half of France in World War II was ‘not particularly inhumane’.
Le Pen delivering a speech in 2007 in front of a slogan reading: ‘Neither Pals, nor Black, nor White, nor North African, but French!’
But it was comments on the Holocaust – which he repeatedly called a ‘detail’ of history – that caused the most shock.
The remark earned the politician nicknamed the ‘Devil of the Republic’ and one in a string of convictions for anti-Semitism and racism.
It also drove a wedge between him and his daughter Marine, who embarked on a mission to clean up the FN’s image after taking over the party leadership in 2011.
She called the process ‘dediabolisation’ – ‘de-demonization’ – in an apparent nod to the legacy left by her father.
Fours years of uneasy political cohabitation between father and daughter ended in a blazing row in 2015, when the younger Le Pen kicked him out of the party for his Holocaust remarks.
The ultimate humiliation for Le Pen senior came when Marine ditched the National Front brand in early 2018.
Le Pen (2R) poses with his wife Pierrette (L) and their daughters Yann (2L), Marine (C) and Marie-Caroline (R) in their flat, in Paris, on May 1, 1974
Jean-Marie Le Pen and his second wife Jany sunbathe on a boat near Goecek, in Turkey’s Mediterranean coast August 25, 1997
Le Pen poses with his daughter Marine in front of the Marseille harbour in 2004
‘She would have to commit suicide to cut her links with me,’ he had told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.
Further ignominy was in store for him, however.
His adored granddaughter, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, a telegenic former MP tipped as a future leader of the far right, also distanced herself from the family brand.
She dropped Le Pen from her name on her social media accounts, becoming simply Marion Marechal.
‘Marion perhaps thinks that it is too much of weight to carry,’ her grandfather grumbled.
His former party, now the National Rally, has since made significant inroads in both European and French politics under Marine Le Pen.
It showed strong gains in this year’s European Parliament elections, and became the largest single party in a subsequent general election in France.
