Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Far-Right National Front Party, Dies At 96

Paris: Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right National Front party, died on Tuesday at the age of 96. Known for his fiery rhetoric against immigration and multiculturalism, Le Pen was also known to be a polarising figure in French politics. His controversial statements, including Holocaust denial, led to multiple convictions and strained his political alliances.

Le Pen was born in 1928 on June 20, in La Trinite-sur-Mer located in Brittany. He was a former paratrooper and Foreign Legionnaire who fought in Indochina and Algeria. He entered politics in the 1950s and became a member of the National Assembly in 1956. Le Pen founded the National Front party in 1972, which became a powerful force in French politics under his leadership.

Le Pen's anti-immigration message and impressive oratory skills captivated crowds, but his extremist views and comments sparked widespread condemnation. He was convicted of antisemitism and xenophobia multiple times and was accused of racism. Le Pen's legacy continues to shape the trajectory of the far right in France.

In 2015, Le Pen, who once reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election, was eventually estranged from his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who renamed his National Front party, kicked him out and transformed it into one of France's most powerful political forces while distancing herself from her father's extremist image.

Marine Le Pen now faces a potential prison term and a ban on running for political office if convicted in an embezzlement trial currently underway.

Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally as the party is now known, confirmed Le Pen's death in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday. Bardella's unusually warm tribute highlighted Le Pen's polemical past, including his ties to the Algerian war, describing him as a “tribune of the people” who “always served France” and expressing condolences to his family, including Marine.

Convicted numerous times of antisemitism and routinely accused of xenophobia and racism, Le Pen routinely countered that he was simply a patriot protecting the identity of “eternal France.” Le Pen had recently been exempted from prosecution on health grounds from a high-profile trial over his party's suspected embezzlement of European Parliament funds that opened in September.

French judicial authorities placed Le Pen under legal guardianship in February at the request of his family as his health declined, French media reported. He had been in frail health for some time.

Le Pen was notably convicted in 1990 for a radio remark made three years earlier in which he referred to the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail in World War II history.” In 2015, he repeated the remark, saying he “did not at all” regret it, triggering the ire of his daughter — by then the party leader — and a new conviction in 2016.

He also was convicted for a 1988 remark linking in a play on words a Cabinet minister with the Nazi crematory ovens, and for a 1989 comment blaming the “Jewish international” for helping seed “this anti-national spirit.” In another setback, Le Pen lost his European Parliament seat in 2002 for a year for assaulting a Socialist politician during a 1997 election campaign.

More recently, Le Pen and 26 National Front officials, including his daughters Marine and Yann Le Pen, have been accused of using money destined for EU parliamentary aides to pay staff who instead did political work for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc's regulations.