The co-founder of the main French postwar far-right movement Jean-Marie Le Pen is to be buried Saturday at a strictly family-only funeral after his death aged 96 exposed polarising attitudes towards a figure who for decades shook and shocked the country.
The funeral in his hometown of La Trinite-sur-Mer in the Morbihan region of Brittany in western France will take place “in the strictest privacy with family”, his relatives said.
He will be buried in the vault where his parents rest. A ceremony will take place on January 16 at the Notre Dame du Val-de-Grace church in Paris that will be open to the public.
Le Pen’s staunchly anti-immigration National Front (FN) burst into the frontline of French politics, and in 2002 he famously eliminated Socialist Lionel Jospin in presidential elections to make the run-off against right-winger Jacques Chirac.
Nicknamed “the devil of the Republic” by opponents, he was often openly racist, made no secret of anti-Semitic views, for which he received criminal convictions, and boasted of torturing prisoners during the war against Algeria.
His daughter Marine Le Pen took over his political mantle but rapidly took steps towards making the far right an electable force, renaming it the National Rally (RN) and embarking on a policy known as dediabolisation (de-demonisation).
She slung her father out of the party for his anti-Semitism but the pair had reconciled in recent years.
News magazine Paris Match posted a picture of Marine Le Pen in tears on being informed of the news but deleted the image following protests from the RN.
Opponents on the left after Jean-Marie Le Pen’s death said they could not mourn the death of a “fascist” while hundreds took to the streets in Paris and other cities to pop champagne corks and celebrate his passing.
But the government condemned such scenes and Prime Minister Francois Bayrou described him as a “fighter” and “figure of French political life”, comments that themselves caused consternation on the left.
President Emmanuel Macron did not make any personal comment, with the presidency issuing a terse written statement saying history would judge Le Pen and adding the president sent his condolences to the family.
But Jean-Marie Le Pen’s death marked a sign of his political rehabilitation among senior RN figures who rushed to hail his contribution.
“He always served France and defended its identity and sovereignty,” the RN party chief, 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, said in a tribute mentioning none of the controversies that surrounded his life.
“Many people he loves are waiting for him up there. Many who love him are mourning him down here,” said Marine Le Pen, describing her father a “warrior” in a more personal tribute.
This posthumous rehabilitation of Jean-Marie Le Pen within his political family “is quite normal because the RN of 2025 is there because there was the FN before,” Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist specialising in the extreme right, told AFP.
“They can’t say anything else, it’s a historical fact. The rise and consolidation of the party are due to Jean-Marie Le Pen who imposed immigration in the debate,” he said.
