From colonial fighter to far-right leader: Jean-Marie Le Pen’s life in pictures
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the rabble-rousing former far-right leader who died on Tuesday aged 96, was a convicted Holocaust denier and perennial outcast of French politics. But the party he founded half a century ago ultimately succeeded in pushing many of his extremist ideas into the political mainstream.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose death on Tuesday was confirmed by the far-right National Rally, spent much of his life fighting – as a soldier in France’s colonial wars, as a fringe politician known for his virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric, or in very public family feuds with his daughter and political heir Marine.
Le Pen’s views sparked massive rejection, even revulsion, among mainstream parties and a majority of French voters, but his electoral success was undeniable – most notably in 2002, the year he burst into France’s presidential runoff in a political earthquake that would forever change the country’s politics.
The champion of colonial France
During the 1970s, the far-right leader was known as "the man with the eye patch" owing to a pirate’s blindfold he wore over his left eye. Le Pen boasted that he lost the use of his eye during a brawl before changing versions a number of times, eventually blaming a traumatic cataract. He abandoned the blindfold in the early 80s and opted instead for a glass eye, ostensibly to project a less disturbing image.
The cult of Joan of Arc
Read more on FRANCE 24 English
Read also:
French far-right figurehead Jean-Marie Le Pen dies at 96
French far right hails ‘patriot’, left slams ‘racist’ as Jean-Marie Le Pen dies at 96
‘Thunderclap’: The day Jean-Marie Le Pen staged the biggest upset in French election history
