Tuesday, January 07, 2025
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The co-founder of the far-right Front National party died on Tuesday, January 7.
2 min read
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the historic leader of France’s far-right, died on Tuesday, January 7, aged 96. Le Pen, who had been in a care facility for several weeks, died at midday “surrounded by his loved ones,” the family said in a statement given to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The co-founder of the far-right Front National – later renamed Rassemblement National – was eventually booted out of the party by his daughter Marine for anti-Semitism. A former paratrooper, Le Pen sent shock waves through France in 2002 when he made it to the second round of the presidential election, which was won by Jacques Chirac.
Marine Le Pen learned of her father’s death during a stopover in Nairobi airport during her return to France from the cyclone-hit French overseas territory of Mayotte, Le Monde journalists Corentin Lesueur and Clément Guillou reported. She was flanked by the Rassemblement National’s number two, her former partner Louis Aliot, who was Jean-Marie Le Pen’s chief of staff. Her plane is due to land in Paris late this evening.
Reacting moments after the news broke on Tuesday, RN President Jordan Bardella paid tribute to “a tribune of the people.” Le Pen “enlisted in the uniform of the French army in Indochina and Algeria, [was] a tribune of the people in the Assemblée Nationale and the European Parliament, he always served France, defended its identity and its sovereignty,” Bardella wrote on X. “I am thinking today with sadness of his family, his loved ones, and of course of Marine, whose mourning must be respected,” he added.
A statement from the Elysée Palace described Le Pen as a “historic figure of the far right” whose “role in the public life of our country for nearly 70 years (…) now falls under the judgment of history.” “The president of the Republic expresses his condolences to his family and friends,” added the presidency.
Prime Minister François Bayrou, in a post on X, wrote that Le Pen was “a figure in French political life,” beyond “the polemics that were his favorite weapon and the necessary confrontations on the substance” of his claims. “We knew, by fighting him, what a fighter he was,” added the prime minister.
Bayrou’s message, however, was denounced by several left-wing figures as overly eulogistic. “It’s not a question of polemics, but of convictions for racist, anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial remarks,” said Communist spokesman Ian Brossat, who the prime minister’s message as “pathetic.”
Radical left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said on Tuesday that Le Pen’s death marked the end of “the fight against the man,” but that “the fight against the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that he spread continues.” “Respect for the dignity of the dead and the grief of their loved ones does not erase the right to judge their actions,” he said. “Those of Jean-Marie Le Pen remain unbearable.”
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