Responses to the 96-year-old’s death have become something of a political Rorschach test in France.
PARIS — Throughout his life, Jean-Marie Le Pen was a polarizing figure, evoking visceral hatred from some corners of society and passionate support from others.
His death proved no different.
Le Pen, who was several times convicted of racism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial, died Tuesday at the age of 96, according to an announcement by the far-right National Rally party he founded. Le Pen had long been a household name in France, and was seen as something of a political caricature until he shocked the country by making it to the runoff round of the 2002 presidential election. Even though he was ultimately trounced by Jacques Chirac, the fact he made it to the second round helped elevate what was a fringe movement to the mainstream.
Reactions to Le Pen’s death have become something of a political Rorschach test in France.
Though Le Pen’s daughter, Marine, had him expelled from the party to distance herself from his legacy, dozens of National Rally officials praised him in their tributes, testimony to his enduring influence on the party.
“He will be remembered as the man who, in the storms, held the flickering flame of the French nation in his hands,” the National Rally itself wrote in a lengthy, effusive statement.
Jordan Bardella, the current head of the National Rally, said on X that Jean-Marie Le Pen “always served France, its identity and its sovereignty.” In his recently published memoir, Bardella claimed he “knew nothing” about Le Pen when he joined the party — including his remarks on racial inequality and his description of the Holocaust as a “detail” of history.
Éric Zemmour, who tried to challenge the Le Pen family’s hold on the French far right by running against Marine Le Pen in the 2022 presidential election, said Jean-Marie “was among the first to warn France of the existential threats it faced.”
Centrists allied with Macron attempted to thread the needle, issuing statements that effectively said merely that he existed.
Prime Minister François Bayrou delivered one such anodyne reaction, describing the five-time presidential candidate as “a figure of French political life.”
President Emmanuel Macron’s office similarly walked on eggshells and called Le Pen, who handed his party’s leadership over to his daughter in 2011, “a historic figure of the far right” whose “role in the public life … is now a matter for history to judge.”
Bruno Retailleau, a tough-talking conservative senator who took up a role in government as interior minister in September, said “a page in French political history has turned” and that Le Pen had “undoubtedly left his mark on his era.”
Left-wing officials were far more explicit in their denunciations of the nationalist figure.
“Respect for the dignity of the dead and the grief of their loved ones does not erase the right to judge their actions,” hard-left France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon wrote on X. Mélenchon, who was the leading leftist candidate in the past two presidential races, has in the past been unafraid to celebrate the deaths of figures he opposed. He tweeted that “Margaret Thatcher will find out in hell what she did to the miners” when the former British prime minister died in 2013.
“The fight against the man is over. The fight against the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism he spread continues,” Mélenchon added.
“A fascist from another era is gone. But he leaves behind some very contemporary heirs,” said François Ruffin, another leading politician on the French left.
Louis Boyard, one of the youngest French lawmakers and a rising star in France Unbowed, said Le Pen “deserves no tribute,” while Socialist Party spokesperson Arthur Delaporte said Le Pen’s death “should not exonerate the National Rally from the weight of his legacy: xenophobia, antisemitism, rejection of others.”