French Extremist Leader Jean-Marie Le Pen Dead At 96

January 7, 2025 Extremists, Nazis

Politico Europe reports:

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the longtime face of the far right in France notorious for his hate speech and Holocaust denial convictions, has died, his family told French newswire AFP. He was 96 years old.

Le Pen had an extraordinary life and career — as a soldier, a far-right parliamentarian, a small publisher of military music and erotic books, an extremist firebrand in a piratical eye-patch and the founder of what became western Europe’s most powerful ultra-nationalist and xenophobic political party under the leadership of his daughter, Marine.

The elder Le Pen’s ultranationalist, anti-immigrant, elite-bashing made him a pariah in 1980s France, but he was, arguably, two or three decades ahead of them. He prefigured the divisive populist politics of Trump in the United States, Nigel Farage and Britain’s other prominent Brexit campaigner and now Éric Zemmour in his own country.

The Guardian reports:

The former paratrooper, who led the party from 1972 to 2011 when it was called the National Front, had been in a care facility for several weeks and died at midday on Tuesday “surrounded by his loved ones”, his family said in a statement.

Le Pen faced charges last year along with his daughter Marine Le Pen over allegations they and other figures in their National Rally party embezzled money from the European parliament with fake jobs. Jean-Marie Le Pen was excused from attending court for health reasons.

Le Pen repeatedly courted controversy and legal action with his views on the Holocaust, which he described as a “mere detail” in the history of the second world war, and his lauding of France’s wartime government at Vichy that collaborated with the country’s Nazi occupiers.

The elder Le Pen last appeared on JMG in 2015 when his daughter, Marine Le Pen, kicked him out of the party as she attempted to shrug off (in vain, most would say) its neo-Nazi roots. French Twitter is doing cartwheels.



JEAN-MARIE LE PEN EST MORT !

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— Cerveaux non disponibles (@cerveauxnon.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 7:04 AM

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