France: Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the conservative National Front, dies at 96 years of age
The father of the party's current leader, which received the most votes in the last legislative elections, the veteran politician was sidelined from the party's front line by a new generation led by his daughter Marine.
French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen
The founder and former leader of the French nationalist right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, died Tuesday in a Paris hospital where he had been admitted several weeks ago. "Jean-Marie Le Pen, surrounded by his family, was called back to God at 12:00 noon on Tuesday," his family said in a statement sent to AFP.
Le Pen has been hospitalized several times in recent years. In early February 2022 he suffered a mild stroke.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was 96 years old at the time of his passing, became a key figure in bringing together conservative and right-wing movements of the last century. He founded the National Front, a formation with which he ran for president until 2007, then gave way to his daughter Marine Le Pen.
Jean-Marie Le Pen managed to reach the second round of the presidential election in 2002, only to lose to the centrist Jacques Chirac.
From his early days in French high-level politics, Le Pen adopted anti-immigration rhetoric, one of the key challenges for the European nation in its post-colonial era. Le Pen's profile has long been heavily criticized for his ties to far-right movements and speeches labeled as racist, anti-Semitic, and identity-focused.
His participation in the wars of French Indochina and Algeria significantly shaped both his political actions and his public persona. Starting in 2007, his daughter, Marine Le Pen, took charge of her father’s party, aiming to revamp its image—seen by some as a hindrance to its political growth—and establish herself as a pivotal figure in contemporary French politics.
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