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Jean-Marie Le Pen was divisive and difficult – but he changed the shape of French politics

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Jean-Marie Le Pen was variously loved and loathed – but he changed the shape of modern French politics.

His youth was shaped by war and he then lived a life of constant battles.

Mr Le Pen’s political career, which was a very long one, was all about belligerence, anger, regret and scapegoats. In his world, everything that had gone wrong could be blamed on someone else.

French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen has died

Mostly, his targets were either migrants or Muslims, or ideally migrants who were also Muslims. But he also berated bureaucrats, gay people and the Arab world in general.

He was convicted of inciting discrimination, downplayed the Holocaust as merely “a detail”, assaulted a fellow MP in the European Parliament and was eventually expelled from his own party – then led by his own daughter – for being an unapologetic extremist.

And yet it would be wrong to write Mr Le Pen off as merely an agitator.

He was, instead, a catalyst within French politics – a lightning rod who edged far-right opinions back towards the mainstream. He maintained that France was for the French, a nationalist sentiment that resonates across so many countries to this day.

Mr Le Pen was born in Brittany in 1928, the son of a fisherman and a seamstress. His father, Jean, was killed when his boat was blown up by a German mine during the Second World War but Mr Le Pen went on to enjoy military life and served in Vietnam and Algeria. He bemoaned France’s withdrawal from its colonies and, as he saw it, the consequent loss of power and prestige.

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France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen dies

On his return to France, Mr Le Pen moved into right-wing politics. He helped to form the National Front in 1972, uniting a disparate group of supporters. Emboldened, Mr Le Pen ran for president in 1974, but ended up with less than 1% of the vote.

He had, however, started the process of establishing himself as a profoundly divisive figure.

In 1976, his apartment was bombed, blowing out a side of the building. Nobody was killed and the perpetrators were never caught.

But the violence of the attack against him seemed to energise Mr Le Pen. And the following year, a wealthy supporter left him a new home – a mansion to the west of Paris built on the orders of Napoleon III. Mr Le Pen, along with his three daughters – Marie-Caroline, Yann and Marine – all lived there.

Jean-Marie Le Pen and  Marine Le Pen  in 2012.
Pic: Reuters
Image:
Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine Le Pen in 2012. Pic: Reuters

Their mother, Pierrette, separated from Mr Le Pen because of his extreme views. He refused to pay alimony saying that “if she wants money, she can clean”. Instead, she accepted the offer to pose for semi-naked photos in Playboy magazine, wearing a maid’s outfit and pretending to clean. The magazine sold around 250,000 more copies than normal.

That crushing electoral defeat did not dissuade Mr Le Pen. Instead, it was to be merely the first of five attempts to win the presidency. None would be successful but on one extraordinary occasion, in 2002, he came second in the first round of popular voting, with the backing of 4.8m voters.

It was a result that pushed Mr Le Pen into a run-off against the sitting president, Jacques Chirac. Fearful of Mr Le Pen’s extremism, Mr Chirac won backing from across the political spectrum and emerged with the biggest landslide in France’s modern history – 82% for him, 18% for Mr Le Pen. Mr Chirac’s vote rose by nearly 20m votes from the first round – Mr Le Pen’s tally went up by just 700,000.

Jean-Marie Le Pen. Pic: Reuters
Image:
Jean-Marie Le Pen. Pic: Reuters

The outcome said much about Mr Le Pen. He had enthused many in the far-right with a rhetoric that seemed, at times, anti-establishment, racist, antisemitic, xenophobic and radical, but which also promised to do anything to protect France and the French.

Clearly, there were millions who would support it but, just as clearly, there were many more who would do anything to stop Mr Le Pen, even if that might mean voting for the widely disliked Mr Chirac. “Rather a crook than a racist” was a familiar statement at the time.

The election marked the high-water mark for Mr Le Pen’s career. In the coming years, his support fell. In 2011, he stood down as leader and was succeeded by his daughter Marine Le Pen.

Jean-Marie Le Pen with his daughter Marine. Pic: AP
Image:
Jean-Marie Le Pen with his daughter Marine. Pic: AP

Mr Le Pen continued as an MEP, but his uncompromising views became ever more at odds with Ms Le Pen’s more emollient approach.

When Mr Le Pen refused to apologise for yet another antisemitic comment, he was suspended, and then expelled, from the party he had founded. A little later, Ms Le Pen was to rename the party the Rassemblement National – the National Rally – to further distance herself from her father’s shadow.

He started a new far-right party and continued campaigning, but by now he was a spent force. There was only space for one Le Pen, and Ms Le Pen had usurped him.

But her father’s influence lingered on. “His impact is still very great today,” said Dr Benjamin Biard, a political analyst specialising in the far right.

“It’s not just Jean-Marie Le Pen. There is the impact of Marine Le Pen who also changed the party, mainly in its structure, its symbols and the way it communicates. For everything else, it has remained generally faithful to the ideals of the National Front as Jean-Marie Le Pen designed it when the party was first founded.

“His ability, playing in his charisma and his way of communicating, has been very inspirational for other political organisations in other countries, particularly in Europe.”

Mr Le Pen brought raw, unapologetic opinions that were, for many, unpalatable, offensive, divisive and sometimes even illegal, but which also helped to remould French politics.

He enjoyed the spotlight, spoke with passion, and enjoyed smiling, performing and shaking hands while the storm swirled around him. Mr Le Pen was divisive and difficult, but he was also impossible to ignore.

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