Jean-Marie Le Pen, Rabble-Rousing Leader of the French Far Right, Dies at 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right modernist political party that built a century of work on racism, anti-Semitism and Nazi propaganda, has died. He was 96 years old.

His death was confirmed by X by Jordan Bardella, the current president of the party Mr Le Pen founded. In a statement sent to the news agency Agence-France Presse, the family of Mr. Le Pen said he died on Tuesday at a hospital in Garches, west of Paris.

In April 2024, and Mr. With Le Pen in poor health after suffering a second heart attack during the year, a French court granted his daughters legal custody, giving them the right to make decisions on his behalf.

Responding with an arm raised holding a circus and uttering outrageous claims, Mr. Le Pen ran for the French presidency five times but failed, leading to a poor result in 2002, riding waves of discontent and xenophobia and fueling talk of a new fascism. as he entertained Jews, Arabs, Muslims and other immigrants – anyone he considered not “pure” French.

The youngest daughter of Mr. Le Pen, Marine Le Pen, succeeded him as leader of the National Front in 2011 and came to the fore because of the anger of many people in politics. He lost three French presidential elections – in 2012, he came third with 17.9 percent of the vote behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy; in 2017, with 33.9 percent, losing to Emmanuel Macron; and in 2022, with 41.5 percent, they were again defeated by Mr. Macron.

But that year's election also sent a record number of representatives of the party, renamed the National Rally, to Parliament – 89 in total – a testament to the success of Ms Le Pen's efforts to normalize it and balance its message in other respects.

At that time it was the leading opposition party, no longer a scandal widely seen as a threat to the republic, and in 2024 the National Rally supported Mr. Macron bans immigration, which is embarrassing for the French president.

Political analysts said voters in increasing numbers embraced Ms Le Pen's messages that sought to exploit economic insecurity among the middle classes and resentment of immigrants, themes championed by her father for years.

Trying to soften some of the toxic rhetoric of her father, who kicked her out of the party in 2015, Ms Le Pen promised to recognize same-sex unions, accept unconditional abortions and abolish the death penalty in her country. And he publicly rejected Mr. This Pen.

Ms Le Pen announced the change of the party's name, at the National Rally, in 2018, although it decided to keep its red, white and blue flame symbol. The reconstruction was a further attempt to move away from the policies associated with his father, who remained a long-term member of the European Parliament.Mr. Le Pen would not have her daughter's reforms. In 2016, he founded and became president of the Committees of Jeanne, named after Joan of Arc, a new far-right political group that embodied his long-standing views.

He insisted that “the races are not equal,” that anyone with AIDS is “some kind of leper” and that “the Jews conspired to rule the world.” He called America a “selfish nation,” dismissed Hitler's gas station as a “detail” of history and said the wartime Nazi invasion of France was “absolutely barbaric.”

In fact, 76,000 Jews in France were deported to death camps during the Nazi regime from 1940 to 1944, in collaboration with France's Vichy government. Only 2,500 survived. In 1944, a Nazi team rolled into the village of Oradour-sur-Glane and rounded up and killed 642 residents in the worst massacre of the war in France. Thousands more civilians were killed by the German Army as the war drew to a close.

Millions of people were disgusted by Mr. This Pen. He was challenged by historians, criticized across the spectrum of French politics, including mainstream supporters, and convicted at least seven times of inciting racial hatred or distorting history.

But with the success of his daughter, many analysts have seen the influence of some of Mr. Le Pen, especially about immigration. He always had a strong core of fans, especially in the south of the country. His prominence reflected not only the shock of his speech but also the political drift to the right in France and other parts of Europe during the recession and times of high inflation, crime and unemployment, as fears rose about the influx of immigrants from Africa as well. in the Middle East.

The most notable achievement of Mr. Le Pen's run for president occurred in 2002, when he defeated the Socialist candidate, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, in the first round of voting, then came second in the national election, defeated by incumbent President Jacques Chirac. . But he won about 18 percent of the vote.

His supporters were by no means a bunch of dissident neo-fascists; many were laborers, shopkeepers, unemployed young people and others facing a bleak future in a nation whose jobs, underperforming schools, housing shortages and greedy politicians have left them frustrated and angry.

Mr. Le Pen had been a street artist in his youth, and when the shaved hair turned to frost he always looked sad: big shoulders and a jagged chin, big eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses, a bad mouth for a man. bad news and raised his fists to deliver with force. But the voice had many variations: needing, loving, whispering, rejecting.

He first appeared in politics in 1956, winning a seat in the National Assembly as a member of the anti-tax movement led by Pierre Poujade. From 1972, when he formed a coalition of extremist groups and founded his own party, the National Front, until 2011, when he retired, he was the recognized leader of French politics, and his vocal, sometimes violent followers were the main opposition. the nation's mainstream conservatives.

His platform was based on a central idea – that France needed to be cleansed because it had strayed from its Gallic and Roman Catholic roots to what he called “the natural order, which is family, homeland, doctrine and respect for the living world.” So he opposed the European Union, all income taxes, immigration of “foreigners,” especially Arabs and Muslims, and same-sex marriage, euthanasia and abortion.

Mr. Le Pen fought for law and order, calling for the return of the guillotine and 200,000 new prison cells, strong protection of the country, traditional culture and the supremacy of “ordinary” people. He suggested isolating anyone with HIV and argued that the French media was corrupt and that “elite” politicians were “leading Jewish organizations.”

He insisted that he was not a racist, fascist or anti-Semitic person, although he spoke about neo-Nazis, drew followers to reactionary elements and spoke often and harshly about racial characteristics. Some of his early colleagues in the National Front had been collaborators with the Nazis during the war.

A French court in 1987 condemned Mr. Le Pen is guilty of denying the Holocaust for saying that the Nazi gas stations were a “detail” in history. He said this again ten years later, and was convicted by a German court. In 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2011, he was convicted of inciting racial hatred against Muslims. In 2012, he was convicted of approving war crimes by saying, in a 2005 newspaper interview, that “the German invasion was not very cruel.” His many convictions resulted in many heavy fines but no prison time.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was born on June 20, 1928, in La Trinité-sur-Mer, a seaside town in Brittany, to Jean Le Pen and Anne-Marie Hervé. His father, a fisherman, was killed when his boat was blown up by a mine in 1942. His mother was a seamstress of local ancestors. The boy was raised Roman Catholic and attended a Jesuit school in Vannes and a lycée in Lorient.

Mr. Le Pen received a law degree from the University of Paris, where he was active in politics, joined street protests against communist students and was repeatedly arrested. He said he lost his left eye during the election dispute, but it was only injured; he later lost his sight due to illness.

As a foreign army pilot in Indochina in 1954, Mr. Le Pen fought against the Communist-ruled Viet Minh. Later, as an intelligence officer in Algeria during its war of independence, he was accused of torturing members of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale. He was not prosecuted and denied the allegations of the witnesses, but lost the cases against the publications that mentioned it.

Mr. Le Pen became one of the minority members of the National Assembly in 1956, but after campaigning for France's withdrawal from Algeria, he lost his seat in 1962, when the colony gained independence.

In 1960, he married Pierrette Lalanne. Besides Marine, they had two other daughters, Marie-Caroline and Yann, and they divorced in 1987. In 1991, he married Jeanne-Marie Paschos. Complete information about the survivors was not yet available.

His family's apartment in Paris was destroyed by a bomb in 1976, but no one was home, no one was seriously injured and the crime was never solved, although there was speculation that Mr Le Pen had been targeted by political enemies. His right-wing views sparked so much opposition that more than a million people joined street rallies against him. In 1977, he suddenly received an inheritance of 7 million dollars and a castle near Paris after the death of Hubert Lambert, a political supporter. Mr. Le Pen also had homes in Paris and his hometown, La Trinité-sur-Mer.

He ran for president in 1974, 1988, 1995, 2002 and 2007. Despite his incredible showing in 2002, when he received 16.9% of the vote and forced a run-off that increased his tally to 17.8% of the vote, the results were not surprising.

But his daughter, Marine, matched his best performance in her first attempt. He played down criticism of Jews but attacked Muslim immigrants because they allegedly failed to follow French standards.

In the 2018 memoir, “Son of the Nation,” the first of a possible two volumes (from his birth to the founding of the National Front in 1972), Mr. Le Pen defended the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II and accused the wartime general and later president, Charles de Gaulle, of “helping to make France smaller.” It was a bestseller in France.

Adam Nossiter contributed reporting.