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She had decided to no longer be called Le Pen in 2018. Marion Maréchal, granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, spoke on Tuesday January 7 on X after the death of her grandfather, aged 96. “Leave alone, I will not abandon the mission”writes the niece of Marine Le Pen, who left the National Front in 2017, to temporarily withdraw from political life. “You have inspired, throughout your life, hundreds of thousands of vocations. You have allowed, for a long time alone against everyone, that millions of French people are once again proud of themselves and their country. Thank you for everything that”continues the MEP, who joined Eric Zemmour’s party, Reconquête, in 2022, before leaving it in 2024.
More than a thousand demonstrators celebrate his death in Paris. At least a thousand people, “often young”, gathered at Place de la République, in the capital, on Tuesday evening to celebrate the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen, according to a France Inter journalist present on site. With smoke bombs, bottles of champagne and anti-fascist slogans, the demonstrators responded to the call of the collective “Les inverti.es” for, according to the people cited by France Inter, “celebrate above all the death of a symbol more than the death of a man”. Other gatherings took place in Lyon and Marseille. In Strasbourg, an undeclared demonstration was dispersed by the police. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau condemned “scenes of jubilation that are simply shameful”.
The Elysée expresses its condolences to the Le Pen family. In a press release, the presidency considers that Jean-Marie Le Pen has “played a role in public life” Who “is now up to the judgment of history”. “The President of the Republic expresses his condolences to his family and loved ones.”
François Bayrou salutes “a figure of French political life”. “Beyond the controversies which were his favorite weapon and the necessary confrontations on the merits, Le Pen will have been a figure of French political life”writes the Prime Minister on X. “We knew, fighting him, what a fighter he was.”
He has “always served France”, writes the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella. “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”declared on X Jordan Bardella, president of his party now called National Rally. The far-right leader “thinking today with sadness of his family, his loved ones, and of course Marine [Le Pen] whose mourning must be respected”.
Marine Le Pen learned of her father’s death on the plane. The president of the RN group in the National Assembly was informed of this by the media while she was making a stopover in Kenya, during the flight which brought her back from a visit to Mayotte, according to a franceinfo journalist on site.
Left-wing figures denounce “the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that he spread”. “Respect for the dignity of the dead and the grief of their loved ones does not erase the right to judge their actions. Those of Jean-Marie Le Pen remain unbearable”writes Jean-Luc Mélenchon on X. “All the RN pay tribute to the repeat offender Le Pen convicted for advocating war crimes and contesting crimes against humanity, for provoking hatred, discrimination and racial violence, for violence”recalls LFI deputy Paul Vannier on X.
The National Rally salutes “a child of the people (…) visionary”. “He will remain the one who, in the storms, held in his hands the little flickering flame of the French Nation and who (…) made the national movement an autonomous, powerful and free political family”greets in a press release the party he founded under the name of National Front.
The central figure of the modern French far right. From his first mandate, in 1956, until his last breath, Jean-Marie Le Pen had a profound impact on political life, to the rhythm of provocations, scandals and coups, but also historic electoral breakthroughs.
