Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right politician who founded France’s National Front party, has died aged 96, according to local reports.
Le Pen has been in a care facility for “several weeks,” and died at today “surrounded by his loved ones”, the BBC reported quoting his family.
Born in 1928, he became pne of France’s most divisive and influential political figures of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Le Pen attempted to become French President five times. He reached a run-off against the incumbent, Jacques Chirac, in 2002, but was soundly defeated.
Le Pen founded the National Front, now known as Rassemblement National, in 1972 and led the party until his resignation in 2011. His daughter, Marine Le Pen, succeeded him, and has also attempted to run for President several times since and turned the party into one of the most influential in France.
The elder Le Pen was known for his brash, charismatic speeches and provocative and incendiary opinions on immigration, the European Union, culture and traditionalism, and religion, especially around faiths such as Islam and Judaism. He was fined for calling the gas chambers used by Nazis to kill Jews during World War II a “detail” in history, and was a known Holocaust denier.
He angered many in Hollywood in 2012 by slamming Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s French film The Intouchables, likening a progressive, multicultural France to the disabled lead character, played by François Cluzet. The film follows a wealthy, physically disabled risk taker and recent widow, whose world is turned upside down when he hires a young, good-humored, black Muslim ex-con, played by Omar Sy, as his caretaker.
Le Pen fell out with his daughter after she took over the National Front and attempted to soften the party’s far-right image, but remained Honorary President until 2015 when he was finally expelled. Despite his views and reputation among his opponents as the ‘Devil of the Republic’, his brand of nationalism and populism won him many supporters. He is considered by many to be a forebear of today’s right-wing leaders such as Donald Trump.
