The founder of the French far-right, Jean Marie Le Pen, died this Tuesday at the age of 96. The death of the creator of the National Front (Front National), of which his daughter Marine later took the reins, has been confirmed by the family to the AFP agency through an official statement.
Le Pen, an unapologetic nationalist who criticized Nazism and its Holocaust, had been admitted to a care center for several weeks due to his poor health, and died at noon “surrounded by his family,” the note says. Their analyzes were worrying.
Le Pen was, at 28, the youngest deputy in the country, elected for the first time in 1956, and ran five times as a candidate for the French presidency although he fell short. He really shook the national political class when he unexpectedly reached the second round of the presidential elections with Jacques Chirac, in 2002, thanks to his combative mix of populism and charisma. A first warning to sailors establishment French politician of whom successive governments have failed to take note, until today’s real threat of the extreme right coming to power.
He was succeeded as party head by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has since run for president three times and turned the party, now called the National Rally, into one of the country’s leading political forces. However, father and daughter had clashed strongly in recent years, to the point that the father accused his son of having politically “murdered” him by the leadership of the radical party.
The decade of fighting between the two for control of the party finally ended with the expulsion of Jean Marie from the formation that he had founded. The trigger, some words in which he indicated that the gas chambers of the Nazi concentration camps were nothing more than “a detail” of History. His daughter has tried to whitewash the party, which has even changed its name (now called the National Group) and sweeten the fascist content of its postulates and this line necessarily included condemnation of her father’s words.
Le Pen Sr., thus, theoretically retired from political life in 2015, becoming a polarizing figure in French politics, loaded with enemies and multiple condemnations for his racism and denialism. Last April, due to the deterioration of his health, he was placed under the guardianship of his daughters. Behind him were his years of agile mind when it came to attacking immigration and multiculturalism. Until the end he tried to remain on the front line, in the end as a political commentator.
Controversy after controversy, even after his expulsion, his divisive legacy has endured, marking decades of French political history and shaping the trajectory of the current extreme right, beyond the friction with his daughter.
Jean Marie and Marine Le Pen, on May 1, 2014, in the traditional National Front march through the streets of Paris.
In a message on his “always served France, defended its identity and its sovereignty.” Bardella has always said that he was a faithful follower of the creator of the Le Pen saga.
In a statement with a marked hagiographic tinge, the National Rally also recalled that Jean Marie founded the Front in 1972 and that “he raised this small patriotic party without means or future to the level of the political formations that matter.” “In six decades of active political struggle,” his party highlighted, “he proved to be a visionary who imposed on the public debate the great issues that currently structure politics such as demography and its corollary, immigration, globalization and the loss of competitiveness of “France, national sovereignty and the risk of dissolving into the European Union.”
The National Group was convinced that he will remain in memory “as a fearless and indomitable fighter at the service of a vision of proud and conquering France; for the patriots of the nations of all the continents of which he tirelessly defended their dignity, he will be will remain as an emblematic defender of the people”.
The news took Marine Le Pen by surprise, who was returning to Paris from the French archipelago of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean. In her case, she was informed by journalists, as revealed by a special envoy from France Info who was traveling with her on the plane.
The turnaround has not gone badly for Le Pen’s daughter: today her party has the largest number of deputies in the National Assembly and that means enough power to overthrow the Executive, as demonstrated with the motion of censure against Michel Barnier, the last December. The National Rally was, by far, the party with the most votes in the European and legislative elections held in France in 2024, with more than eleven million votes.
However, her father’s death comes at a crucial time for his daughter, who now faces a possible prison sentence and a ban on running for political office if she is found guilty in the ongoing embezzlement trial. is currently being carried out. The Prosecutor’s Office requests his disqualification, which could prevent him from contesting the Elysée, that is, the Presidency, in 2027.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.es
