Jean Louis Marie "Jean-Marie" Le Pen (French: [ʒɑ̃maʁi]; Breton: [lə pɛn]; 20 June 1928 – 7 January 2025) was a French politician who founded the far-right National Front (now National Rally) party. He served as the party's president from 1972 to 2011 and as its honorary president from 2011 to 2015.
Born in Brittany, Le Pen focused on issues related to immigration to France, the European Union, traditional culture and values, law and order, and France's high rate of unemployment. His progression in the 1980s is known as the "lepénisation of minds" due to its noticeable effect on mainstream political opinion. His controversial speeches and his integration into public life made him a figure who polarized opinion. He was convicted of statements downplaying the Holocaust, and fined for incitement to discrimination regarding remarks made about Muslims in France. He was expelled from the party by his daughter Marine in 2015 after making controversial statements.
Le Pen's longevity in politics and his five attempts to become president of France made him a major figure in French political life. His unexpected progress to the second round in the 2002 presidential election—when he was beaten in a landslide by incumbent Jacques Chirac—left its mark on French public life, and the "21st of April" is now a frequently used expression in France. He served three terms in the National Assembly and was a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1984 to 2019.
Jean Louis Marie Le Pen was the only son of Jean Le Pen (1901–1942). Jean Le Pen was born in Brittany, like his ancestors, and had started work at the age of 13 on a transatlantic vessel. He was the president of the Association des Anciens Combattants, a fisherman, and a municipal councillor of La Trinité-sur-Mer, a small seaside village in Brittany. Jean-Marie Le Pen's mother, Anne-Marie Hervé (1904–1965), was a seamstress and also of local ancestry. His mother was a speaker of the Breton language, and Le Pen would say in his old age that his only regret was not learning the language.
Le Pen was born in La Trinité-sur-Mer on 20 June 1928. He was orphaned as an adolescent (Ward of the Nation, brought up by the state), when his father's boat La Persévérance was blown up by a mine in 1942. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and studied at the Jesuit Collège Saint-François-Xavier in Vannes, then at the Lycée Dupuy-de-Lôme in Lorient.
In November 1944, aged 16, Le Pen was turned down (because of his age) by Colonel Henri de La Vaissière (then representative of the Communist Youth) when he attempted to join the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). He then entered the faculty of law in Paris, and started to sell the monarchist Action Française's newspaper, Aspects de la France, in the street. He was repeatedly convicted of assault and battery (coups et blessures).
Le Pen started his political career as the head of the student union in Toulouse. He became president of the Association Corporative des étudiants en droit, an association of law students whose main occupation was to engage in street brawls against the cocos (communists). He was excluded from this organisation in 1951.
After his time in the military, Le Pen studied political science and law at Panthéon-Assas University. His graduate thesis, submitted in 1971 by him and Jean-Loup Vincent, was titled Le courant anarchiste en France depuis 1945 ("The anarchist movement in France since 1945").
After receiving his law degree, Le Pen enlisted in the Foreign Legion. He arrived in French Indochina after the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu, which France had lost and which prompted Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France to put an end to the Indochinese war at the Geneva Conference. Le Pen then was sent to the Suez in 1956, but arrived only after the cease-fire.
In 1953, a year before the beginning of the Algerian War, he contacted President Vincent Auriol, who approved Le Pen's proposed volunteer disaster relief project after a flood in the Netherlands. Within two days, there were 40 volunteers from his university, a group that would later help victims of an earthquake in Italy. In Paris in 1956, he was elected to the National Assembly as a member of Pierre Poujade's populist UDCA party. Le Pen often presented himself as the youngest member of the Assembly, but a young communist, André Chène, 27 years old and half a year younger, was elected in the same year.
In 1957, Le Pen became the general secretary of the National Front of Combatants, a veterans' organization. The next year, following his break with Poujade, he was re-elected to the National Assembly as a member of the Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP) party, led by Antoine Pinay.
Le Pen claimed that he had lost his left eye when he was savagely beaten during the 1958 election campaign. Testimonies suggest that he was only wounded in the right eye and did not lose it. He lost the sight in his left eye years later, due to an illness. (Popular belief was that he wore a glass eye.) During the 1950s, Le Pen took a close interest in the Algerian War (which lasted from 1954 to 1962) and the French defence budget.
Elected to parliament under the Poujadist banner, Le Pen voluntarily reengaged himself for two to three months in the Foreign Legion. He was then sent to Algeria in 1957 as an intelligence officer. He was accused of having engaged in torture. Le Pen denied these accusations, although he admitted knowing of its use. Le Pen also criticised President Charles de Gaulle for granting Algeria independence, accusing him of "helping make France small".
He directed the 1965 presidential campaign of far-right candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, who obtained 5.19% of the votes. Le Pen insisted on the rehabilitation of the Collaborationists, declaring that:
Was General de Gaulle braver than Marshal Pétain in the occupied zone? It is not certain. It was much easier to resist in London than to resist in France.
In 1962, Le Pen lost his seat in the Assembly. In 1963, he created the Société d'études et de relations publiques (Serp), a company involved in the music industry that specialized in historical recordings and sold recordings of the choir of the CGT trade union and songs of the Popular Front, as well as Nazi marches.
In 1972, Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party. He then ran in the 1974 presidential election, obtaining 0.74% of the vote. In 1976, his Parisian apartment was blown up with dynamite (he had been living at that time in his mansion of Montretout in Saint-Cloud). The crime was never solved. Le Pen then failed to obtain the 500 signatures from "grand electors" (grands électeurs, mayors, etc.) necessary to present himself in the 1981 presidential election, won by the candidate of the Socialist Party (PS), François Mitterrand.
Criticising immigration and taking advantage of the economic crisis striking France and the world since the 1973 oil crisis, Le Pen's party managed to increase its support in the 1980s, starting in the municipal elections of 1983. His popularity was higher in the south and east of France. The FN obtained 16 seats in the 1984 European elections. A total of 35 FN deputies – including Le Pen, who was elected for Paris – entered the National Assembly after the 1986 elections (the only legislative elections held under proportional representation).