Jean-Marie Le Pen, figure of the French extreme right and finalist in the 2002 presidential election, died Tuesday at the age of 96 in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine), in an establishment where he had been admitted there several weeks ago.
“Jean-Marie Le Pen, surrounded by his family, was called back to God this Tuesday at 12 p.m.,” his family said in a statement sent to AFP.
“Engaged under the uniform of the French army in Indochina and Algeria, tribune of the people in the National Assembly and the European Parliament, he has always served France, defended its identity and its sovereignty”, greeted on president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella.
Marine Le Pen was on a plane at midday on Tuesday that was to bring her back to the mainland of Mayotte, where she went to express her solidarity after the devastating passage of Cyclone Chido.
The death of Jean-Marie Le Pen was announced while part of the political class gathered on Tuesday in Paris in front of the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes, ten years after the attacks of January 2015.
The executive reacted cautiously. The Elysée said in a press release that Jean-Marie Le Pen was a French “historical figure of the extreme right” whose “role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years (…) falls under now the judgment of History. “The President of the Republic expresses his condolences to his family and loved ones,” it was added.
The Prime Minister, François Bayrou, recognized “a figure of French political life”, beyond “the controversies which were his favorite weapon and the necessary clashes on the merits”. “We knew, when we fought him, what a fighter he was.”
The Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau (LR), for his part estimated that a “page in French political history is turning” with the death of the man who “unquestionably marked his era”.
The founder of the National Front, which became the National Rally, gradually withdrew from political life from 2011, when his daughter Marine Le Pen took over the presidency of the party.
Weakened by several health accidents, a medical expert report noted last June “a profound deterioration” in his physical and psychological state, estimating that he was neither able to “be present” nor to “prepare his defense” at the trial of the assistants of the FN MEPs which took place in Paris from September to November.
In mid-November, Jean-Marie Le Pen was hospitalized and then admitted to a structure in Garches, west of Paris, not far from his home in Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine).
An outstanding tribune, a sulphurous provocateur obsessed with immigration and Jews, a patriarch upset by his own people, this Breton who liked to be nicknamed “the menhir” had brought the French extreme right out of its marginality during a political career which marked the Fifth Republic.
– “Republican Front” –
The most emblematic of his successes will remain unfinished. On April 21, 2002, at the age of 73 and for his fourth candidacy for the Élysée, he created a surprise by qualifying for the second round of the election.
The triumph has its downside: for two weeks, millions of people march against racism and its political incarnation. Above all, Jean-Marie Le Pen allows the easy re-election of his sworn enemy Jacques Chirac.
Twenty-two years later, when the RN had just triumphed in the European elections, a providential dissolution decided by Emmanuel Macron gave a glimpse of the possibility that his daughter Marine would take the far right to power, a dream to which he had finally set himself to believe but which was again shattered on a “republican front”.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, after being married to Pierrette Lalanne, the mother of his daughters Marie-Caroline, Yann (herself mother of MEP Marion Maréchal) and Marine, married Jany Paschos for the second time.
Sébastien Chenu, vice-president of the party, estimated that “the disappearance of Jean-Marie Le Pen is that of an immense patriot, visionary and an incarnation of courage”. “It is also the disappearance of a man of immense culture, who brought the hope of millions of French people.”
In a press release, the National Rally evoked the memory of “the one who, in the storms, held in his hands the little flickering flame of the French nation and who, through limitless will and tenacity, made the national movement a family autonomous, powerful and free politics.
Éric Ciotti, who allied himself with the RN during the last legislative elections, described a “politician with a career punctuated by gray areas, but also courage, powerful intuitions and sincere patriotism”.
Former 2022 presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, opponent of Marine Le Pen, also paid tribute to him: “Beyond the controversies, beyond the scandals, what we will remember about him in the coming decades is “he was among the first to alert France of the existential threats that awaited it.” “It will remain the vision of a man, and his courage, at a time when courageous men were not so numerous,” added the former polemicist.
On the left, the leader of La France insoumise (LFI) Jean-Luc Mélenchon estimated that “the fight against man is over” but “the fight against hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that he has widespread, continue”.
“Friends of Vichy and torture in Algeria. The FN founded with the Waffen SS, the +Durafour crematorium+ and the +details of history+. A fascist from another time has gone. But leaves behind he heirs, very current,” added MP François Ruffin, who sits with the environmentalists in the National Assembly.
After the death of the ex-president of the National Front, “his nauseating ideas remain. Let’s fight them, tirelessly”, commented PCF spokesperson Ian Brossat.
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