National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen dies aged 96

Paris: 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 globalisation, shook the French political establishment when he unexpectedly reached the presidential election run-off vote against Jacques Chirac in 2002.

Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2017.Credit: AP

A polarising figure in French politics, Le Pen was known for fiery rhetoric against immigration and multiculturalism, which earned him both staunch supporters and widespread condemnation. His controversial statements, including Holocaust denial, led to multiple convictions and strained his political alliances.

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 the party, born out of racism, to the mainstream.

People react during a gathering at Place de la République in Paris after it was announced Jean Marie Le Pen had died. Le Pen founded the French far-right movement in the 1970s. The sign reads “The dirty racist is dead”.Credit: Getty Images

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.

Marine Le Pen succeeded her father at National Front leader, and has since rebranded the party.Credit: AP

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.

Controversy was Le Pen’s constant companion: accusations of racism dogged the National Front from the moment he co-founded the party in 1972.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, right, and his daughter Marine Le Pen in the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 2009. Despite rallying against the European Union, both Le Pens sat in its parliament.Credit: AP

He was tried, convicted and fined in 1996 for contesting war crimes after declaring that the Nazi gas chambers were “merely a detail” of World War II history.

The comment provoked outrage in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1942.

“I stand by this because I believe it is the truth,” he said in 2015 when asked if he regretted the comment.

Le Pen died in Garches, west of Paris after having been admitted to a care facility several weeks ago, his family said.

Reuters, AP, Bloomberg