Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of the French National Front party, presidential candidate, member of the European Parliament, and patriarch of the Le Pen political family dynasty, has died at the age of 96.
A figure who loomed large over French politics over the past five decades, Mr Le Pen was hailed Tuesday by his supporters as a fearless “patriot” and derided by his detractors as a fascist and an antisemite.
The Brittany-born politician served as the president of the National Front from 1972 to 2011 and honorary president of the party from 2011 to 2015 when he was ousted by his daughter and current leader of the rebranded National Rally, Marine Le Pen.
Prior to his removal, Le Pen ran five campaigns for the French presidency, including a 2002 run in which he shocked prognosticators by reaching the second round of voting before ultimately losing to Jacques Chirac.
A strident campaigner against mass migration, Le Pen frequently courted controversy during his frequent television appearances and was fined multiple times for hate speech, including for asserting that the Holocaust of Jewish people during World War II was a mere “detail”.
“I’m not saying the gas chambers didn’t exist. I haven’t seen them myself. I haven’t particularly studied the question. But I believe it’s just a detail in the history of World War II,” he said in 1987.
Le Pen also drew backlash for commenting positively about the Nazi-collaborating French Vichy puppet government of Marshal Philippe Pétain and for questioning the number of people killed during the Holocaust. He denied being antisemitic and claimed that the actual threat to Jews in France came from the growing presence of Muslims in the country.
In a moment of historical coincidence, Le Pen’s death was announced on the day that France marked the tenth anniversary of the Islamist attack on the offices of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine, in which two Algerian jihadists shot and killed 12 people and injured 11 more in reprisal for the magazine publishing a caricature of Mohammed.
After reiterating his belief that the Holocaust was a “detail” in 2015, the party he founded voted to expel him, and two years later, his daughter Marine Le Pen renamed the party to the National Rally (Rassemblement National) in a bid to distance herself and the party from her father’s legacy. Their relationship never fully recovered after the split.
While he cast the move as politically suicidal, Marine Le Pen has grown the party to the largest in the French parliament. She currently stands as the frontrunner to replace Emmanuel Macron as president of the republic when his second and final term ends in 2027.
Marine Le Pen (R) and her father French former leader and founder of the Front national (FN) Jean-Marie Le Pen attend a youth summer congress of the Front National (FN) in Frejus, southern France, on September 7, 2014. (Photo by Valery HACHE / AFP) (Photo by VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images)
Responses in France to Le Pen’s death on Tuesday were, as during his life, decidedly divided.
The government attempted to cast a neutral tone, with the Élysée Palace describing Le Pen as a “historical figure of the far right,” who has “played a role in the public life of our country for almost seventy years, which is now the judgment of history.”
Prime Minister François Bayrou added per Le Figaro: “Jean-Marie Le Pen was a figure in French political life. We knew, when fighting him, what a fighter he was.”
Others were less charitable. MP François Ruffin, a key leader of the leftist New Popular Front coalition, described Le Pen as “a fascist from another time” who should not be praised and whose “racist ideas still need to be fought”.
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said that “respect for the dignity of the dead and the grief of their loved ones does not erase the right to judge their actions,” accusing Le Pen of spreading “hatred, racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism.”
Le Pen was praised by leading figures on the right, however, including former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, who wrote: “Beyond the controversies, beyond the scandals, what we will remember about him in the coming decades is that he was among the first to alert France of the existential threats that awaited it.”
Zemmour, who has followed in Le Pen’s footsteps in criticising Islamic influence in France, added: “There will remain a man’s vision, and his courage, at a time when there were not so many brave men.”
National Rally president Jordan Bardella said: “Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead. Engaged in the uniform of the French army in Indochina and Algeria, tribune of the people in the National Assembly and the European Parliament, he has always served France, defended its identity and its sovereignty.
“Today, I think with sadness of her family, of her loved ones, and of course of Marine whose mourning must be respected.”
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