French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen dies at 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right National Front known for his fiery rhetoric against immigration and multiculturalism that won him both fervent supporters and widespread condemnation, has died. He was 96 years old.

Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, as the party is now called, confirmed Le Pen’s death in a message posted on the social media platform X on Tuesday.

A polarizing figure in French politics, Le Pen’s inflammatory statements, including Holocaust denial, have led to multiple condemnations and strained her political alliances.

Le Pen, who had reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election, eventually separated from his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who renamed his party Front National, expelled him and transformed it into the one of the most powerful political forces in France while distancing itself. of the extremist image of his father

Despite her exclusion from the party in 2015, Le Pen’s divisive legacy endures, marking decades of French political history and shaping the trajectory of the far right.

His death comes at a crucial time for his daughter. She now faces prison time and a ban on running for political office if convicted in the ongoing embezzlement trial.

A fixture in French politics for decades, the fiery Jean-Marie Le Pen was a cunning political strategist and gifted orator who used his charisma to captivate crowds with his anti-immigration message.

The portly, silvery son of a Breton fisherman saw himself as a man charged with a mission: to keep French France under the banner of the National Front. Having chosen Joan of Arc as the party’s patron saint, Le Pen made Islam and Muslim immigrants his main target, blaming them for France’s economic and social woes.

A former paratrooper and foreign legionnaire who fought in Indochina and Algeria, he led his supporters in political and ideological battles with a panache that became the signature of his career.

“If I advance, follow me; if I die, avenge me; if I slip away, kill me,” Le Pen declared at a party congress in 1990, reflecting the theatrical style that fueled the fervor of his supporters for decades.

Le Pen had recently been exempted from prosecution on health grounds during a high-profile trial over his party’s alleged embezzlement of European Parliament funds, which opened in September. Le Pen had already been convicted 11 times, including for violence against a public official and anti-Semitic hate speech.

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