Rising to prominence for his overt anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and links to Nazism, he thrived in controversy – until it led to his own downfall after his daughter and political successor, Marine Le Pen, ousted him from the party in 2015.
Following a rebrand from National Front to National Rally – the far-right co-opted a new generation of voters, symbolised by the National Rally’s 29-year-old president, Jordan Bardella. He announced Le Pen’s death on social media, calling him a “tribune of the people” who “always served France.”
Marine Le Pen, France’s National Front political party leader, reacts with her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, after being re-elected during their congress in Lyon (Photo: Robert Pratta/Reuters)Left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said on Tuesday that Le Pen’s death marked the end of “the fight against the man,” but that “the fight against the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism that he spread continues.”
Born in 1928, in the Brittany village of Trinité-sur-Mer, Le Pen attended law school in Paris in the 40s, before he joined the French Foreign Legion in 1954, where he was accused of torturing an Algerian man to death in front of his family.
Vincent Latour, a professor of French and English politics at the University of Toulouse told The i Paper that Le Pen managed to “co-opt small movements that had never previously worked together, a hodgepodge of royalists who never accepted the republic, Catholic fundamentalists, and people nostalgic of the third Reich and French colonialists. This created the Front National, partly inspired by the National Front in the UK.
French extreme right-wing National Front party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen waves at the crowd at the end of his speech as National Front in 1986 (Photo: Charles Platiau/Reuters)
As Le Pen rose to prominence for his extremist views, he received a two-month suspended prison sentence for “apology of war crimes,” and incurred fines throughout his life for denying war crimes against Jewish people.
Le Toure said it was a “shock to people when he managed to qualify for the second round after Chirac”, which led to “the re-birth of the Republican front” – when the centre-right and far-left routinely unite to oppose the far-right in Presidential elections.
The rebrand of the far right
But then Le Pen’s youngest daughter, Marine, was elected leader of the party in 2011. She continued the legacy of her father, before coming third in the presidential election with 17.9 per cent of the vote, narrowly missing out in the run-off between François Hollande and Sarkozy.
Mr Latoure added that there was a “clear departure in tactics”.
The climax of Marine Le Pen’s tenure came when she kicked her own father out of the party in 2015 after he made racist remarks, allowing her the power liberalise some political positions of the party, by revoking its opposition to same-sex partnerships, and its support for the death penalty.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and MP Jordan Bardella attend the Rassemblement National’s congress to elect their president in Paris on 5 November, 2022. (Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP)
Le Pen 2027
In July’s 2024 election, France breathed a collective sigh of relief as the far-right narrowly missed out on winning power.
The assemblage of leftists under the NFP topped the poll with 188 seats, while President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition Ensemble came second with 161 seats. The RN fell over a hundred seats short of a majority with 142 delegates.
While Marine Le Pen still faces a potential prison term and a ban on running for political office due to an embezzlement trial, if she avoids conviction, she will have a clear run at the presidency.
Mr Smith added: “We have to take this seriously. The real challenge is for the other political parties – Macron, and the Republican Front, need to find a candidate that can challenge the far-right.”
“This is the Godfather influence of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a lasting Le Pen dynasty that could bring the far right into power.”
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( How Jean-Marie Le Pen made the French far-right mainstream )
Also on site :