He was a divisive and corrosive force in French politics, and he will not be missed by the majority of voters.
A rabble-rouser who pandered to xenophobia, racism and resentment, Jean-Marie Le Pen was the founder of the National Front and a major figure in the right-wing movement in contemporary France.
Le Pen, who died on January 7 at the age of 96, ran for the presidency five times between 1974 and 2007. In 2002, he came perilously close to victory, defeating the Socialist candidate, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, in the first round of the election. In round two, he was trounced by President Jacques Chirac. Nevertheless, he won nearly 18 percent of the vote, a tangible sign of the social and economic ills that beset France.
A champion of law and order and of traditional values that his constituents of blue-collar workers and shopkeepers cherished, he promoted the notion that France had strayed from its Gallic and Roman Catholic roots and was in dire need of “purification” and a nativist immigration policy.
Responding to critics, he claimed he was a patriot protecting the identity of “eternal France.”
Worse still, he was an apologist of the wartime Vichy regime, which collaborated with Nazi Germany in the persecution of Jews. And in general, he rarely lost an opportunity to single out Jews and Muslims alike for opprobrium.
He was convicted no less than seven times for inciting racial hatred or distorting the historical record. And although he claimed he was neither a racist nor an antisemite, he spoke like one, spewing out a litany of bile and lies.
He accused Jews of conspiring “to rule the world.” He said that “the races are unequal.” He libelled “elite” politicians, claiming they were on “the payroll of Jewish organizations.” He minimized the effect of the Nazi occupation of France, saying it not been “especially inhumane.”
And in what may have been his most egregiously offensive remark, he stated in 1987 that the gas chambers in Nazi extermination camps were merely “a detail” in the history of the war. As he ridiculously put it, “If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps take up only two pages and the gas chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail.”
A court in Munich, having ruled that he had sugar-coated the Holocaust, convicted and fined Le Pen. In a sarcastic retort typical of his abrasive and abusive personality, he said, “I understand now that it’s the Second World War which is a detail of the history of the gas chambers.”
Against his better judgment, he constantly repeated this noxious comment about the gas chambers, defiantly saying he “did not at all” regret it. This prompted his daughter, Marine Le Pen, to eject him from the party and rename the National Front the National Rally.
Disgusted by his daughter’s unilateral move, Le Pen formed his own party, Jeanne Committees, in 2016, and remained a member of the European parliament.
In 2017, he lashed out at a Jewish singer who had criticized the National Front. “Next time we will put him in the oven,” bellowed Le Pen, who was charged with incitement of racial hatred.
Being an equal opportunity bigot, he denigrated Muslims as well, for which he was repeatedly convicted on the same charge.
Le Pen, whose world view and crude comments reminded observers of the deep antisemitic strain in French politics, became a politician in 1956 as a member of Pierre Poujade’s anti-tax party. He previously had been a paratrooper in the Foreign Legion in Indochina and an intelligence officer in Algeria.
That he gravitated to Poujade was hardly accidental.
Poujade, having supported Leon Blum’s left-wing Popular Front government in 1936, turned to the radical right and became a follower of the proto-fascist Jacques Doriot. While he initially supported Philippe Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime, he switched sides and joined the French Air Force after Germany occupied all of France.
In 1956, Poujade was fined the equivalent of $40,000 after being convicted of incitement to racial hatred in connection with the publication of two antisemitic articles in his periodical, French Fraternity. Charges against Poujade were filed by the Movement Against Antisemitism and for Peace and the Jewish War Veterans of France.
Having been influenced by Poujade’s ethnocentric ideas, Le Pen founded the National Front in 1972. He retired in 2011, handing over the reins to Marine Le Pen, a far more pragmatic person.
Gradually distanced herself from his toxic platform, she denounced antisemitism and rallied behind Israel. Her condemnation of the “pogroms on Israeli soil” following Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023 was appreciated in some circles. Yet it was widely regarded as a tactic to move the National Rally away from its unsavory antecedents.
As one pundit wrote, “Marine Le Pen’s support of Israel has been seen by some commentators as a certain political opportunism. She has long sought to ‘normalize’ her party and move it away from its jack-booted, antisemitic past, which was seen as a brake on the party’s new political ambitions.”
To no one’s surprise, she has promised to protect French Jews from Islamism, a potentially dangerous force if left unchecked. As Jordan Bardella, her party president, said, “For lots of French Jews, the National Rally is a shield against Islamist ideology.”
Marine Le Pen is clearly trying to expand her party’s base so that she will have a real shot at the presidency in the next election. With her father’s passing, she can now focus on achieving this objective.