There are political events that immediately become history. April 21, 2002 is one of them. During this presidential election promised to the left and to Lionel Jospin, prime minister outgoing five years of cohabitation with a right caught up in business, a “thunderclap” occurs. Jean-Marie Le Pen qualifies for the second round. He will face Jacques Chirac, president elected since 1995.
Le Pen proscribes him, the extremist, who has denounced since his beginnings in politics “friends and rascals” and the “gang of four”finally plays in the same league as them. It was the crowning achievement of a political career that began almost half a century earlier.
The far-right candidate will be largely beaten by Jacques Chirac (82.21%, against 17.79%), after daily demonstrations against the FN culminating in a parade on 1is-May which will bring together huge crowds to say “no” to Le Pen. April 21 is also the starting point of the second phase of growth of the FN which will result, more than twenty years later, in seeing this formation become one of the main parties in the country, under the name of National Rally and under the leadership strategy of Jean-Marie Le Pen's daughter, Marine Le Pen.
Jean-Marie Le Pen died Tuesday January 7 at the age of 96. He was the man who put the far right back at the center of French politics. Almost disappeared at the Liberation, through the purge, and discredited by the episode of collaboration and Vichy, this political family found strength, vigor, longevity and popular base forty later, when the National Front, led by Mr. Le Pen made his first breakthroughs, first in Dreux, during a municipal by-election in 1983, then in the European elections of 1984.
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