French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen has died at the age of 96.
Le Pen, hospitalized for several weeks, died Tuesday at noon “surrounded by his loved ones,” his family said.
Le Pen – a Holocaust denier and unrepentant extremist on race, gender and immigration – founded the French far-right Front National party in 1972.
He reached the second round of the presidential election against Jacques Chirac in 2002.
Le Pen’s daughter, Marine, took over as leader of the party in 2011. She has since renamed the party Rassemblement National, making it one of France’s main political forces.
Jordan Bardella, who succeeded Marine Le Pen as party president in 2022, said Jean-Marie had “always served France” and “defended its identity and sovereignty.”
French Prime Minister François Bayrou said anyone who fought Le Pen “knew what a fighter he was”, while Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau offered his condolences to Le Pen’s family and said “a page of the history of France had been turned around.
Far-right nationalist Eric Zemmour declared on “.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI), declared that respect for the dignity of the dead and the grief of their families “does not cancel the right to judge their actions. Those of Jean-Marie Le Pen are unbearable.
“The fight against this man is over. The fight against the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that he spreads continues.”
For several decades, Le Pen was France’s most controversial political figure. His detractors denounced him as a far-right fanatic and the courts repeatedly convicted him for his radical remarks.
Still, Le Pen’s vehement anti-immigration policies appealed to voters. In the 1988 presidential election, he received 14% of the vote. This figure rose to 15% in 1995 and in 2002, Le Pen reached the final round of the presidential election.
However, parties across the political spectrum called on their supporters to vote against him, and his opponent Chirac won with 82% of the vote.
In 2015, Le Pen was expelled from the National Rally after reiterating his famous Holocaust denialism.
The dismissal also came during a public feud with his daughter, who accused him of reiterating Holocaust denial in an attempt to “bring himself out of obscurity.”
“Maybe by getting rid of me she wanted to make some sort of gesture to the establishment,” Le Pen would later tell the BBC’s Hugh Schofield.