Jean-Marie Le Pen passes away : death of a controversial character in French politicsFar-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen died in this beginning of 2025, on January 7, at the age of 96. The founder of National Front led the political party from 1972 to 2011. He became an honorary president from 2011 to 2015 before being kicked out of the party by his daughter Marine Le Pen in 2015 due to controversial statements.This is maybe what the world will remember from a politician like Jean-Marie Le Pen, if something must be reminded: his controversial speeches about immigration, World War 2 and Africa that led him to be convicted multiple times by the French justice. Le Pen belongs to the category of people who, when they die, arouse mixed feelings in the mind of the living. Because Le Pen knew what he did, and what he said. The excuse of the mistake cannot be displayed since the far-right politician made all his controversial speeches intentionally.Le Pen was convicted of statements related to the Holocaust. He said, for instance, that the gas chambers were a “point of detail” in the history of the Second World War. He was also fined due to incitement to discrimination, incitement to racial hatred and public abuse. In 2014 in Marseille, Southern France, he was saying that the Ebola virus “could solve the demographic issue in the world within three months”.The racist, xenophobic, negationist and anti-Semitic assertions of Marine Le Pen’s father are numerous. The death of the politician is not going to make everything better, and such ideas and thoughts remain unfortunately deeply rooted in the mind of certain people who will maybe say it with more diplomatic words. In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen was not very far from supreme power when he reached the second round of the presidential election against Jacques Chirac. In France, the upcoming presidential elections are expected in 2027. With far-right parties that begin to gainpower in countries like Italy and Hungary, the threat is palpable in the country of Voltaire and Montesquieu.
