Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the French far-right National Front party, passed away at the age of 96. He was a controversial figure known for his outspoken views on immigration and globalization.
Jean-Marie Le Pen , the founder of the French far-right National Front party, has died aged 96. Le Pen, who used pugnacious race politics to tap into working-class concerns over immigration and globalization, shook the French political establishment when he unexpectedly reached the presidential election run-off vote against Jacques Chirac in 2002.He was succeeded as party chief in 2011 by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has since run for the presidency three times herself.
Using populism, eloquence and charisma, Le Pen helped re-write the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, in harnessing voter discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump’s rise to the White House. He also ushered in a political dynasty in France, handing the reigns of his extreme far-right party to his daughter, Marine – a relationship that later soured as the latter moved to party, born out of racism, to the mainstream.Credit:Jean-Marie Le Pen fought in France’s colonial wars before moving into politics. After setting up the National Front, he went on to contest five presidential elections. Fighting – both political and personal – plagued Le Pen’s life, and led to bitter feuds with his daughters and his ex-wife, often conducted publicly and furiously. He stunned the world by making a 2002 presidential run-off, then losing in a landslide to Jacques Chirac as voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s. An unabashed nationalist, Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union, which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states
Jean-Marie Le Pen National Front France Politics Far-Right
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