French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen dies at 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-right National Front who was known for fiery rhetoric against immigration and multiculturalism that earned him both staunch supporters and widespread condemnation, has died. He was 96.

Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally as the party is now known, confirmed Le Pen’s death in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday.

A polarizing figure in French politics, Le Pen’s inflammatory statements, including Holocaust denial, led to multiple convictions and strained his political alliances.

Le Pen, who once reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election, was eventually estranged from his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who renamed his National Front party, kicked him out and transformed it into one of France’s most powerful political forces while distancing herself from her father’s extremist image

Despite his exclusion from the party in 2015, Le Pen’s divisive legacy endures, marking decades of French political history and shaping the trajectory of the far right.

His death came at a crucial time for his daughter. She now faces a potential prison term and a ban on running for political office if convicted in the embezzling trial currently underway.

A fixture for decades in French politics, the fiery Jean-Marie Le Pen was a wily political strategist and gifted orator who used his charisma to captivate crowds with his anti-immigration message.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen and her father Jean Marie Le Pen in Nice, France in 2012.Frederic Nebinger / Getty Images file

The portly, silver-haired son of a Breton fisherman viewed himself as a man with a mission — to keep France French under the banner of the National Front. Picking Joan of Arc as the party’s patron saint, Le Pen made Islam, and Muslim immigrants, his primary target, blaming them for the economic and social woes of France.

A former paratrooper and Foreign Legionnaire who fought in Indochina and Algeria, he led sympathizers into political and ideological battles with a panache that became a signature of his career.

“If I advance, follow me; if I die, avenge me; if I shirk, kill me,” Le Pen said at a 1990 party congress, reflecting the theatrical style that for decades fed the fervor of followers.

Le Pen had recently been exempted from prosecution on health grounds from a high-profile trial over his party’s suspected embezzlement of European Parliament funds that opened in September. Le Pen had 11 prior convictions, including for violence against a public official and antisemitic hate speech.

French judicial authorities placed Le Pen under legal guardianship in February at the request of his family as his health declined, French media reported. He had been in frail health for some time.