French far-right political leader Le Pen dies at 96

Unrepentant bigot and Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the National Front and fought for populist policies

- ALEXANDER BUTLER

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s main far-right National Front party and an unrepentant extremist on race, immigration and multiculturalism, has died aged 96.

Le Pen had been in a care facility for several weeks and died at midday yesterday “surrounded by his loved ones”, the family said in a statement.

Le Pen repeatedly courted controversy and legal action with his views on the Holocaust, which he described as a “mere detail” in the history of the Second World War, and his lauding of France’s wartime government at Vichy that collaborated with the country’s Nazi occupiers.

His supporters saw him as a charismatic figure who would speak up for the everyman, but he was widely condemned as a bigot who was convicted several times by the courts for his remarks. Le Pen amassed 11 convictions.

The conviction over the Holocaust denial remark came in 1990, three years after he made it on the radio. In 2015, he repeated the quote, saying he “did not at all” regret it, leading to a new conviction in 2016. He also was convicted for a 1988 remark linking in a play on words a cabinet minister with the Nazi crematory ovens, and for a 1989 comment blaming the “Jewish international” for helping seed “this anti-national spirit.” Le Pen lost his European parliament seat in 2002 for a year for assaulting a socialist politician during a 1997 election campaign.

Le Pen shocked France when he unexpectedly reached the presidential election run-off vote against Jacques Chirac in 2002. That led voters to vote heavily for his opponent Mr Chirac to block the far-right from power, with Mr Chirac securing 82 per cent of the vote.