Longtime leader of France’s extreme right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been hospitalized in the Paris region with heart problems. The 94-year-old father of France’s current right-wing populist leader Marine Le Pen suffered a “mild heart attack”, according to people close to him on Saturday evening. According to media reports, however, the doctors assess Le Pen’s state of health as “serious”.
His family and friends are with him in the hospital and “worried but calm,” said Le Pen’s adviser Lorrain de Saint Affrique. The 94-year-old suddenly complained of severe exhaustion on Saturday in his house in the town of Rueil-Malmaison, west of Paris, the weekly magazine “Le Point” wrote. The news channel BFMTV and the newspaper “Le Figaro” also reported on Le Pen’s admission to a hospital.
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 almost 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. He ran for the office of French President five times. In 2002, he made it into the second round of the presidential election against incumbent Jacques Chirac, triggering shock waves.
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 engaged in a long-term public feud with her. In court, he asserted that he was initially allowed to retain the title of honorary chairman. In 2018, however, this was deleted. A year after losing the 2017 presidential election, Marine Le Pen had the party renamed the Rassemblement National.