How Jean-Marie Le Pen made the French far-right mainstream ...Middle East

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the “godfather” of the French far- right and co-founder of the National Front, has died at the age of 96.

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.

Under his leadership, the party went from capturing just 0.1 per cent of the vote in the 70s, to sending shockwaves across France, when he advanced to the second round of the presidential election, ultimately losing to Jacques Chirac in a landslide.

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.”

While Le Pen’s fiery blend of charisma and ethno-nationalism propelled the National Front from the margins to the mainstream of French politics, critics on the left, claim he is responsible for poisoning political discourse and scapegoating migrants as the source of France’s social and economic problems.

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.”

Experts say Le Pen leaves behind a France deeply polarised, while he is survived by his daughter, who is poised to win the next French presidential election in 2027, according to the latest opinion poll.

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.

A notorious holocaust denier, he founded a company, SERP, alongside former Nazi Leon Gaultier, which produced out far-right political propaganda, while he later founded the National Front in 1972.

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.

“In the beginning they were not taken seriously, and immigration was a marginal pre-occupation at the time. But overtime, he managed to make the far-right visible and present in the public arena – mainstreaming the question of immigration from the 80s onward, which inevitably set the agenda for the next forty years.”

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 Pen used this media coverage to fuel his presidential campaigns. Each year, he increased his vote, until the presidential elections of 2002 – where he obtained 16.86 per cent of the votes in the first round of voting. This was enough to qualify him for the second round, the first time a candidate with such blatant far-right views had ever qualified for the second round of a French presidential election.

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

For more than a decade, many in France thought that the 2002 poll was an anomaly of history, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who adopted much of the right-wing rhetoric and rivalled Le Pen for charisma – appeared to have staved off the rise of the far-right by occupying much of its political space.

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.

“Marine Le Pen saved the party,” said Paul Smith, Associate Professor in French Politics at the University of Nottingham. “There was a strong sense of continuity with father handing to daughter. His continued presence kept the more extreme elements in the party and retained the far-right, pro-Nazi fringes, while she looked to modernise the party by detoxifying its image, using less extreme language but remaining strongly anti-immigration.”

Mr Latoure added that there was a “clear departure in tactics”.

“The main difference was Marine Le Pen wants power, while her father enjoyed being a maverick and a thorn in the side of the French political class. She sought to make the party look more respectable, by condemning antisemitism, and changing the name of the party.”

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.

But experts say that despite Le Pen’s efforts to normalise the party, the mask often slips during elections.

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.

In the first round of voting, the far-right National Rally topped the polls, and fear hit inner cities across France. In response, the leftist New Popular Front (NFP) proclaimed that they would stand candidates aside to avoid splitting the vote for the second round, and the centre ground reluctantly returned the favour.

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.

France once again united to oppose the far-right – but a hung parliament has led to a rudderless government, with President Macron’s choice of prime minister, former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, ousted in a no-confidence vote within two months.

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.

Latour said: “I think it’s a real possibility; the polls tend to show that Le Pen, and even Bardella, stand a good chance of being elected.”

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.”

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