Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has died aged 96, founded the Front National party in 1972, reestablishing the extreme-right as a political force in France. Le Pen brought together various fringe movements into a formal party structure and gradually built the party up to a position where it was seen as a serious contender for power at local and regional levels. It was, however, Le Pen’s shock performance in the 2002 presidential election, where he came second to the incumbent Jacques Chirac, that made Le Pen an international name.

How did Le Pen shape France’s political landscape?

Le Pen forged an alliance between several extreme-right movements in the late 1960s. Several of these movements were paramilitary in nature and engaged left-wing activists in street-fighting, especially during the events of May and June 1968. By creating the Front National, Le Pen established a rallying point for the far-right. Le Pen persevered throughout the 1970s to make it clear the Front National was his party, thus establishing his family as central to the future of the far-right. Coming second in the presidential election of 2002 was a major shift in how the public viewed Le Pen and the far-right.

Why was Le Pen a controversial figure in France?

Le Pen was twice convicted of Holocaust denial through comments he made about the Nazi death camps. Le Pen also claimed he had committed torture while serving as a paratrooper in Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence. Le Pen never held back on his political views and this arguably was why many people across the political spectrum regarded him as politically unpalatable for much of his career.

What is Le Pen’s legacy?

Le Pen laid the foundations for his daughter, Marine Le Pen, to take over the party and to rebrand this in her image. By turning the far-right into a political force in the 1970s and 1980s, Jean-Marie helped to establish networks that would go onto serve his daughter very well. Although Marine Le Pen distanced herself from her father, Jean-Marie’s greatest legacy is that he showed that any publicity can be good publicity and turned his willingness to cause controversy and to offend into a tool for political campaigning. One day we may well see a Le Pen as president of France: unthinkable when Jean-Marie founded the Front National.