French Far-Right Leader Marine Le Pen Pays Tribute to Her Politically Polarizing Father

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen paid tribute Wednesday to her father Jean-Marie , the founder of the National Front party who died at 96, calling him a “warrior” in politics despite their notoriously harsh political disputes.

Le Pen posted on social media platform X: “A venerable age had taken the warrior away but given us back our father," suggesting she was able to reconcile with him.

Jean-Marie, who has three daughters including Marine, the youngest, was a polarizing figure, convicted multiple times of antisemitism, discrimination and inciting racial violence.

“Many people he loved are waiting for him up there. Many who love him mourn him here below,” Le Pen wrote. “Fair winds and following seas, Papa (Dad)!"

His death was announced on Tuesday when Le Pen was on her way back from the French territory of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean, which was hit by a devastating cyclone in December.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered on the Republic Plaza in Paris on Tuesday evening, to celebrate the death of the far-right politician. The crowd could be seen dancing and chanting: “Happy New Year, Jean-Marie is dead.”

Similar gatherings took place in other French cities, including Lyon and Marseille.

French anti-racist group SOS Racisme said Le Pen spent his life promoting the far right through “racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and Holocaust denial.” The group also paid tribute in a statement to “generations of activists who have given their time, youth and energy to fight the National Front and its ideas.”

In an interview in 1987, Jean-Marie referred to the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail in World War II history.”

He repeated the remark in 2015, saying he “did not at all” regret it, triggering the ire of his daughter, by then the party leader, seeking to distance herself from her father’s extremist image. That year, he was kicked out of the party, later renamed the National Rally, as part of the younger Le Pen's efforts to transform it into one of France’s most powerful political forces.

Jean-Marie’s funeral will take place on Saturday in his birth town of La Trinite-sur-Mer, in the western Brittany region.