He had been facing health problems since at least April 2023, when he suffered a heart attack
CLARA BALBI
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS) – Jean-Marie Le Pen, historic figure of France’s ultra-right, died at the age of 96 this Tuesday (7). The information was confirmed by the politician’s family to the AFP news agency.
The leader helped found a party that has become central in French politics in recent years, the National Front (FN), later renamed National Rally (RN). At the time of the party’s creation, in 1972, it brought together an extremist right that had been fragmented since the end of the Vichy regime.
Jean-Marie would continue to capture the attention of French public opinion with offensive and polarizing statements for the next 50 years, a confrontational stance that to some extent foreshadowed that of the populist ultra-right leaders who rose in the 2010s.
The conservative radical ended up being expelled from the FN by his own daughter, Marine Le Pen, in 2015. She, who is currently leading polls of voting intentions for the next presidential elections, carried out a successful process of softening the party’s image when taking office. his leadership in 2011, toning down the party’s extremist rhetoric and expelling members more likely to provoke controversy.
Father and daughter shared the same goal, however: the Presidency of France. While Marine ran for the Élysée three times, the last two losing to the current president, Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Marie did so on five occasions throughout his long-lasting political career.
The last of these was in 2007, when he finished fourth, in a sign of his diminished influence. The election in which he came closest to winning was in 2002. That year, the then candidate surprised by defeating the socialist Lionel Jospin and advancing to the second round against Jacques Chirac.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest against Jean-Marie, and he ended up losing to Chirac by a large margin, obtaining only around 18% of the vote, compared to 82% for the re-elected president.
The ultra-rightist’s political platform, which in recent years involved a strong aversion to migration, Islam and the European Union (EU), was not always consistent. But his fiery rhetoric persisted throughout his decades in politics, which included stints in the National Assembly and the European Parliament.
His anti-Semitic, racist, xenophobic and racist statements caused him to be condemned by the courts several times.
A Holocaust denier, he said the Nazi gas chambers were “a detail” of World War II and downplayed the Nazi occupation of France, suggested the Ebola virus was a solution to control population growth and claimed environmentalists were communists in disguise. between others.
Jean-Marie was born in the port city of La Trinité sur Mer, in western France, in 1928. He fought for his country in the Indochina colonial war, which ended with the independence of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and in the unsuccessful attempt to take over of the Suez Canal before winning his first legislative elections at the age of 27.
He interrupted his mandate to participate in the Algerian war of independence. A statement by him in defense of the torture of Algerians by the French Army raised suspicions that he had participated in acts of this type, which he denies.
The politician had been facing health problems since at least April 2023, when he suffered a heart attack. In 2024, his absence from a RN trial on suspicion of embezzlement of public funds from the European Parliament was justified by the “profound deterioration” of his physical and psychological state.
President Emmanuel Macron offered his condolences to the ultra-rightist’s family. “It is up to history to judge” Jean-Marie’s role in French history, he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, central figures in the French ultra-right mourned the leader’s death. Jordan Bardella, who assumed the RN presidency after Marine stepped down in 2022, wrote that his thoughts were with “his family, his loved ones, and with Marine, of course, whose mourning must be respected.”
“He was always at the service of France and defended its identity and sovereignty”, he added in the publication on X.
Eric Zemmour, an ultra-rightist who ran against Marine in 2022, stated on the same social network that the legacy of
Jean-Marie “will be his vision and his courage at a time when the brave were few”. “Beyond the controversies, what we will remember about him in the coming decades will be that he was one of the first to warn France about the existential threats that awaited it.”
Left-wing radical Jean-Luc Melénchon stated that the battle against the ultra-right is over, but “the fight against hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism […] continues”.
TIMELINE
1928 Born in La Trinité sur Mer, a port city in western France
1956 He is elected to the National Assembly and begins his political career
1972 Helps to found ultra-right party National Front (FN)
1974 Runs for President for the first time; comes in fourth place, with 0.74% of the votes
1984 Wins elections to the European Parliament and begins a 35-year period as an MEP
2002 Second round of elections against the then president, Jacques Chirac, amid intense protests; loses by a large margin
2011 Marine Le Pen, his daughter, replaces him as leader of the National Front (FN)
2015 He is expelled from the National Front (FN) amid the softening of the party’s image
2018 National Front (FN) becomes National Reunion (RN)
2023 Suffers ‘mild heart attack’
2024 Absents from trial on suspicion of embezzlement of public funds due to health conditions
