2023-04-16 16:24:38
Jean-Marie Le Pen co-founded the Front National in 1972 and led it for almost four decades.
(Photo: dpa)
Paris The far-right founder of the French National Front party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been taken to hospital due to a medical emergency. However, according to his daughter Marine, there is nothing to worry about. “He’s fine,” she said on Sunday on the RTL radio and television program “Le Grand Jury”. Her father is proud of his 95th birthday, which sometimes requires a few hospital stays. She hasn’t seen him yet, but she will soon.
The 94-year-old suddenly complained of severe exhaustion on Saturday in his house in the city of Rueil-Malmaison, west of Paris, several French media reported on Sunday. The reason for this may be heart problems, wrote the weekly magazine “Le Point”, citing a friend of Le Pen and other unnamed sources.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s hospital stays have increased in recent years. In February 2022 he was hospitalized after a minor stroke, at the end of September 2018 because of a fever that lasted for weeks, and in June of the same year because of a dangerous pulmonary complication.
Despite his advanced age and having retired from active politics years ago, Jean-Marie Le Pen still enjoys influence on the French right. He co-founded the Front National in 1972 and led it for nearly four decades. During this time, he transformed the FN from a right-wing splinter group into a serious political force, using pithy provocations to create anti-immigrant sentiment. His daughter Marine Le Pen took over the leadership of the party from him in 2011 and has been trying ever since to make the party electable by adopting a more moderate approach to middle-right and center voters.
The right-wing populist broke politically with her father after he repeatedly thwarted her strategy. The FN finally disfellowshipped Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2015 after he repeatedly downplayed the Nazi murder of Jews in gas chambers as a “detail of history” of World War II.
He fought back bitterly, accused his daughter of “treason” and fought a long-term public feud with her. In court, he asserted that he was initially allowed to retain the title of honorary chairman. However, this was later deleted. A year after losing the 2017 presidential election, Marine Le Pen had the party renamed the Rassemblement National.
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