It was poignant that the death of France's controversial politician Jean-Marie LePen on Tuesday came one day after the president of nearby Austria tapped Herbert Kickl, leader of the anti-illegal immigration, euroskeptic Freedom Party (FPO), to form a new government as chancellor.
Le Pen, who was 96 at the time of his death, spawned widespread controversy for decades by taking the same populist stands in France upon which Kickl and his party successfully ran in elections for the Austrian parliament earlier this year.
What Le Pen championed in five increasingly stronger, but losing bids for president of his country — from opposition to illegal immigration to law and order to wariness about foreign entanglements — are the issues that today fuel similar politicians and parties throughout Europe: the Party of Freedom in the Netherlands, which placed first in national elections last year; the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), shown by most polls to be running second in elections scheduled for February; and Reform UK, the party forged by Brexit leader Nigel Farage, which is gaining new members by the day.
Prime Ministers Giorgia Meloni of Italy and Viktor Orban of Hungary were elected on tidal waves of animosity toward illegal immigration and the resultant housing crisis in their countries. Both also notably abjure political correctness — not unlike the always outspoken Le Pen.
"Jean-Marie Le Pen's party has failed to win power, but Le Pen's ideas have become central in the political debate in Europe," Nicolas Barre, executive editor of Politico France, told Newsmax. "The discussion on immigration was taboo in Europe. With Le Pen, it has become mainstream."
Le Pen's propensity to engage in public discussion about whether France was right to surrender to Germany in 1940 or make comments judged antisemitic and be fined made winning any office above his seat in the European Parliament out of the question. But under daughter Marine Le Pen, the party founded by her father was "detoxified," and any member who trafficks in antisemitic activity or words is expelled. Marine LePen herself is a strong supporter of Israel in its war with Muslim enemies.
"Unlike his daughter, Jean-Marie Le Pen was well aware that he would never come to power," said Barre. "But he wanted his ideas to triumph. Now that his ideas are at the heart of the public debate, his daughter can dream of one day acceding to power. In a sense, that's what her father left her as a legacy."
Marine drew 41.5% of the vote against President Emmanuel Macron in 2022 and looms large as a presidential candidate in 2027. Her National Rally (RN) party captured the single largest contingent of seats in the French National Assembly last year. Marion Marechal, niece of Marine Le Pen and granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, is considered the eventual heiress to the movement launched by her grandfather in 1974.
Jean-Marie Le Pen's career is a chronology of right-of-center causes in postwar France. The orphaned son of a fisherman, he became politically active as a teenager, handing out leaflets calling for the release from prison of Marshal Philippe Petain — overseer of the surrender of France to Germany in 1940 and head of the Nazi-run Vichy France until 1944.
Jean-Marie Le Pen served in the army in Indochina just before it won its independence from France and was elected to the French parliament as a Poujadist — France's own Tea Party movement, led by anti-tax shopkeeper Pierre Poujade.
He reenlisted in the army to fight against Algerian independence and was long accused of participating in the torture of captured rebels. Jean-Marie Le Pen admitted knowing of the torture but always denied any role in it.
A born entrepreneur, he marketed bestselling albums that included "voices of history" such as Petain's surrender broadcast and a full Roman Catholic Mass in the preconciliar Latin Rite by schismatic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Beginning as a candidate for president in 1974 and drawing 0.74% of the vote, Jean-Marie Le Pen stunned the world by placing second in the initial balloting of the 2002 contest and thus going into a runoff with the top vote-getter and incumbent, President Jacques Chirac. Chirac won the runoff in a landslide, but Jean-Marie Le Pen's platform of opposing illegal immigration, keeping a strong hand on crime, and saying what he wanted in defiance of political correctness was clearly becoming a formula for success.
"He sounded very much like [President-elect Donald] Trump today in this regard, saying 'what you just can't say,'" Alexandre Pesey, founder and executive director of Institut de Formation Politique, told us.
"Like Trump, he could fill his meetings like no one else and talk for hours with jokes and, perhaps unlike Trump, with a lot of historical references. He is coming from the generation of Third and Fourth Republic brilliant public speakers who were able to talk without any notes."
On Saturday, as family members and close friends buried Jean-Marie Le Pen in La Trinite-sur-Mer, his hometown in France's western Brittany region, hundreds of leftists in Paris popped champagne corks and toasted the death of the politician they freely called "the devil of the Republic." Whatever one thought of him, Jean-Marie Le Pen's legacy throughout European politics can best be summarized by the epitaph of British architect Christopher Wren: "If you seek his legacy, look around you."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.