PARIS: Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died Tuesday aged 96, was the far-right bogeyman of French politics, infamously dismissing the Holocaust as a detail of history and spending half a century whipping up anger over immigration.
The co-founder of the far-right National Front — later renamed the National Rally (RN) — was eventually booted out of the party by his daughter Marine for anti-Semitism.
A former paratrooper, Le Pen sent shock waves through France in 2002 when he made it to the second round of the presidential election, which was won by Jacques Chirac.
Le Pen, who seemed more at ease in the role of provocateur than would-be president, appeared as surprised as everyone else by his spectacular breakthrough.
Years later, he boasted that the rise of the far right around Europe showed his ideas had gone mainstream.
RN leader Jordan Bardella, his daughter Marine’s right-hand man, hailed Le Pen’s influence in a carefully-worded tribute.
“As a soldier in the French army in Indochina and Algeria, as a tribune of the people... he always served France and defended its identity and sovereignty,” the 29-year-old said on X.
Born in the port of La Trinite-sur-Mer in the western Brittany region on June 20, 1928, he was the son of a seamstress and a fisherman.
His father’s fishing boat hit a mine during World War II, killing him — a loss that hit the young Le Pen hard.
Anxious to see action, Le Pen volunteered for service in two wars in French colonies — the First Indochina War (1946-1954) in Vietnam, and then in Algeria (1954-1962).
Shortly after his return from Algeria he entered politics and became France’s youngest MP at 27 when he was elected to parliament in 1956.
But he was unable to resist the lure of the battlefield.
Later that year, he took part in the disastrous Franco-British military expedition to seize the Suez Canal, and a few years later joined forces fighting to keep Algeria French.
As in Vietnam, he was infuriated to see France losing its colonial possessions, accusing World War II hero Charles de Gaulle of “helping make France small” by granting Algeria its independence.
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