The founder of the National Front died at the age of 96 this Tuesday, January 7, 2025. The career of this French political figure will have been marked by defeats, victories and also controversies, particularly with regard to comments deemed “racist”. In Martinique, public opinion remembers that Jean-Marie Le Pen was sent back to the island twice. Then in 2015, it was his own daughter, Marine Le Pen, who excluded him from the Party for his “excesses”. The FN, renamed in 2018 National Rally, has since seen a constant increase in its electorate in Martinique.
Jean-Marie Le Pen died in a hospital in Hauts-de-Seine in the Paris suburbs, Tuesday January 7, 2025, after almost 70 years of political life. The founder of the National Front (in 1972), was often controversial during his long career, for having made remarks described by part of public opinion and the press as “racists, fascists and anti-Semites”.
Overseas and in Martinique in particular, the leader of the French far right has never been in the odor of sanctity. Jean-Marie Le Pen was in fact turned back twice on the island, in December 1987 when his plane was not even able to land due to the invasion of the airport by inhabitants hostile to his arrival. Then, in 1997, he was attacked by locals during a stopover at the Aimé Césaire terminal.
He “played a role in public life” which “is now subject to the judgment of history” affirms the Elysée. The Prime Minister, François Bayrou, for his part recognized “a figure of French political life”, beyond the controversies which were his favorite weapon and the necessary clashes on the merits.
Among Jean-Marie Le Pen’s favorite themes was immigration. His daughter Marine took it up on her own, but in a more nuanced way, when the latter found herself at the head of the FN. After adding to her program the fight against purchasing power and insecurity, two themes that speak to all French people and particularly to overseas residents, the leader decided to change the identity of the Party in June 2018.
Exit the FN, metamorphosed into RN – National Rally – with the objective of pursuing a strategy of “de-demonization”.
“The work of refoundation that we have undertaken continues more than ever,” she said during her speech in Lyon, announcing a “major strategic, technical and political change” (…). Even before the formalization of this new name, the founder of the FN, Jean-Marie Le Pen, denounced a “betrayal” in a press release: “The shameful erasure of its identity is the heaviest blow that the National Front has ever received since its foundation. I condemn those who inspired it as well as those who carried it out. (…) More than a label, it is also a long and courageous activist history that we deny.”
lemonde.fr (June 1, 2018)
This ideological break seems to have gradually borne fruit in the voting booths both in France and overseas, since the nationalist electorate has strengthened in practically all overseas territories.
Indeed, during the last presidential elections in 2022, more than 60% of Martinicans preferred Marine Le Pen to 2nd turn, facing the candidate Emmanuel Macron. In total, 13 million votes were cast in favor of the RN across France.
Marine Le Pen therefore did better than her father when he qualified for the second round of the presidential election in 2002, the first and only occasion in her political career. On the other hand, the girl has already arrived at the gates of power twice (in 2017 and 2022). For the next deadline of 2027, several polls already anticipate the boss of the RN at the top of voting intentions on 1is tour.
Given these encouraging results for the National Rally, which is still refining its “political virginity” since the schism between the girl and her father, we can wonder: what if the latter was a “pebble” in the shoe of the one who still aspires to the supreme office?
Death of Jean-Marie Le Pen: overseas, the impossible conquest of the founder of the National Front
