Jean-Marie Le Pen was a millstone for his daughter

The founder of the National Front died this morning at the age of 96, discredited, ignored, mentally incapacitated and largely irrelevant

Le Pen
(Getty)

Perhaps it’s tasteless to make the point that maybe nobody will be happier to see Jean-Marie Le Pen buried than his daughter Marine. The founder of the National Front died this morning at the age of ninety-six, discredited, ignored, mentally incapacitated and largely irrelevant, except as a specter. 

Today the terms “hard right,” “extreme right” and “far right” are often carelessly employed, but Len Pen père was all of these, a millstone for his daughter as she attempted to drag the party towards the mainstream and kick down the door of the Elysée Palace. Though it’s been years…

Perhaps it’s tasteless to make the point that maybe nobody will be happier to see Jean-Marie Le Pen buried than his daughter Marine. The founder of the National Front died this morning at the age of ninety-six, discredited, ignored, mentally incapacitated and largely irrelevant, except as a specter. 

Today the terms “hard right,” “extreme right” and “far right” are often carelessly employed, but Len Pen père was all of these, a millstone for his daughter as she attempted to drag the party towards the mainstream and kick down the door of the Elysée Palace. Though it’s been years since his outbursts against Jews, Arabs and gays made headlines, it’s now sure there will be no more of them.

Marine was at war with her father for decades, finally expelling him from the National Front in 2005 after his repeated claims that the Holocaust was a “detail of history.”

She described her father’s behavior as “political suicide.” In 2008 she changed the name of the party to Rassemblement National, or National Rally, and has been tacking to the center ever since. 

Le Pen was nevertheless a consequential figure in French politics, serving as a deputy, a member of the European Parliament and running five times for the presidency

He founded the National Front in 1972 with individuals who had ties to collaborationist groups from the Vichy era. Among them Pierre Bousquet, an ex-Waffen-SS officer, Roland Gaucher, a former member of the collaborationist Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP) during the Vichy era and François Brigneau, who was part of the collaborationist movement during World War Two.

The apogee of Le Pen’s political career was in 2002, when he qualified for the second round of the presidential election. But his brand of racism and Poujadisme has been losing ground for years. In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy pushed him back to fourth place. 

So if there is any political advantage in the death of Le Pen, it accrues to his daughter, who is poised to mount her fourth bid for the presidency. She is currently favorite to win. It doesn’t hurt that her discredited father is gone.

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