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The veteran French politician led the National Front Party from 1972 to 2011. The founder of the French National Front party (now named National Rally), Jean-Marie Le Pen, passed to the other side at the age of 96.

The war hero was at a care facility surrounded by his loved ones, his family said in a statement.

No Liberal-Left respect for the dead: newspapers, television and radio called in their favorite ‘experts’ from The Anti-Fascist League to vilify the near-miss president of France.

‘A pariah, even among his own people’ chortled the unspeakable media hacks. Often ‘described as far right’, ‘A staunch supporter of Petain’, ‘Fascist’… this is the political maverick (like Putin) who on several occasions very nearly saved France from being overrun by migrants, debt slavery, globalism and war with Russia.

Born in 1928 to a fisherman and a seamstress, Le Pen worked in numerous occupations throughout his life, including fisherman, deep-sea miner, and apartment surveyor.

He volunteered for the French Foreign Legion’s parachute regiment twice, and was involved in the Suez conflict in 1956 and the Algerian War of 1957.

He started his political career in the 1950s and was elected to the French National Assembly twice between 1956 and 1962 before founding his own party, the National Front, in 1972.

Le Pen also ran for president in France in 1974, 1988, 1995, 2002 and 2007, and came second in 2002 with almost 18% of the vote.

In 1984, the politician won a seat in the EU Parliament and was consistently re-elected for almost two decades until 2003. He then returned to the European legislature in 2004 and retained his seat until 2019.

Throughout his career, Le Pen courted controversy with his views, often described by media and left-wing groups as ’far right.’ He was known for his staunch anti-immigration stance and downplaying the Holocaust, as well as speaking favorably of Marshal Philippe Petain – the head of the government in occupied France during World War II.

The veteran politician handed over the reins of the party to his daughter, Marine Le Pen, in 2011 and became its honorary president.

He was expelled from the movement by the more diplomatic Marine four years later after saying that the gas chambers used to kill Jews in the Holocaust were only a ’detail of history,’ and urging France to join forces with Russia to save the white world.

At that time, Marine Le Pen said her father was committing political suicide with his remarks. Jean-Marie said he would not vote for his daughter in the 2017 presidential election.

Marine Le Pen has distanced herself and her party from her father’s most extreme views and rebranded the National Front as the National Rally in 2018. The National Rally and its allies currently hold 89 seats in the French National Assembly, making it the second-biggest opposition group in parliament after the left-wing New Popular Front coalition.

Leading researcher at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Fedorov said ‘Jean-Marie Le Pen will go down in history as the founder of the National Front in 1972, as a politician who became famous for his controversial and radical statements and views. Including the history of France and the Vichy regime in France.

‘He was a volunteer during the Indochina War, he volunteered for the French armed forces that fought in Algeria. He laid the foundation for a party that gradually after Marine Le Pen took the helm, drifted from the nationalist pr-Russian right to a moderate right party and has since achieved great success.

This was confirmed by the election results in several previous electoral cycles. In the last snap parliamentary elections, they formed the largest party in the lower house of the French parliament. Therefore, the figure (Jean-Marie Le Pen) is controversial, but will definitely go down in the political and modern history of France,’ Fyodorov concluded.