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Jean-Marie Le Pen (born June 20 , 1928 , La Trinité-sur-Mer , France ) is a French Far-right Nationalist Politician , founder and president of the Front National (National Front) party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times, including in 2002 , when in a surprise upset he came second, polling more votes in the first round than the main Left candidate, Lionel Jospin . Le Pen lost in the second round to president Jacques Chirac . Le Pen again ran in the 2007 French Presidential Election and finished fourth. Le Pen focuses on PERSONAL LIFE AND EARLY CAREER Le Pen was born in a small seaside village in Brittany , the son of a fisherman. He was raised as a Roman Catholic , but then Orphan ed as an adolescent (''pupille de la nation'', brought up by the state), when his father's boat was blown up by a mine. After after trying to join the '', September 1, 2006 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 a congress of the UNEF student union and having insulted, while drunk, an Abbot . After having received his law diploma, he enlisted in the Army in the Foreign Legion in Indochina , where he arrived after the 1954 Dien Bien Phu Battle (lost by France, and which prompted the President of the Council Pierre Mendès France to put an end to the war at the Geneva Conference ). He was then sent to Suez ( 1956 ), but arrived only after the cease-fire. He was then sent to Algeria ( 1957 ) as an Intelligence Officer . He has been accused of having engaged in Torture , but he denied it, although he recognized having known of its use. After his time in the military, he studied Political Science and Law at Paris II . His graduate thesis, submitted in 1971 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jean-Loup Vincent , was titled ''Le courant anarchiste en France depuis 1945'' or "'' The Anarchist Movement In France Since 1945 ''". His marriage (June 29, 1960 - March 18, 1987) to Pierrette Lalanne resulted in three daughters; their daughters have given him nine granddaughters. Their break-up was somewhat dramatic, with his ex-wife posing nude in the French edition of '' Playboy '' to ridicule him. Marie-Caroline, another of his daughters, would also break with Le Pen, following her husband to join Bruno Mégret , who split from the FN to found ''MNR'', the rival Mouvement National Républicain '' (National Republican Movement). ''The youngest of Le Pen's daughters, Marine Le Pen , is a senior member of the Front National .'' In 1977 Le Pen inherited a fortune from Hubert Lambert, son of the '', September 1, 2006 . In the early 1980s, Le Pen's personal security was assured by KO International Company, a subsidiary of VHP Security, a '', 10 December 2005 On May 31 , 1991 , Jean-Marie Le Pen married Jeanne-Marie Paschos ("Jany"), of Greek descent. Born in 1933, Paschos was previously married to Belgian businessman Jean Garnier . POLITICAL CAREER , predicting the now unrealised possibility of Jean-Marie Le Pen becoming President in 2007]] Le Pen started his political career as the head of the student union in Toulouse . In 1953 , a year after 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 , 1956 , he was elected to the National Assembly as a member of Pierre Poujade 's UDCA populist party. Le Pen, 28 years old, was the youngest member of the Assembly. In 1957 , he became the General Secretary of the Front National Des Combattants (National Front of Combatants), a veteran's organization, as well as the first French politician to nominate a Muslim candidate, Ahmed Djebbour, an Algerian, who was elected in 1957 as deputy of Paris. The next year, following his break with Poujade, Le Pen 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 however 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 that he wears a Glass Eye is untrue). During the 1950s, Le Pen took a close interest in the Algerian War (1954-62) and the French defense budget. Le Pen then directed the 1965 Presidential Campaign of far-right candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour , who obtained 5.19% of the votes. He insisted on the rehabilitation of the Collaborationist s, declaring that: "''Was General De Gaulle more brave than the Marshall Pétain in the occupied zone? This isn't sure. It was much easier to Resist in London than to resist in France.''" During the 1961 , September 10, 2001, Voltaire Network The following year, he lost his seat at the Assembly. He created the Serp (''Société d’études et de relations publiques'') firm, a company involved in the Music Industry , which produced both chorals of the CGT trade-union or songs of the Popular Front and Nazi marches. The firm was condemned in 1968 for "praise of War Crime and complicity" after the diffusion of Third Reich songs. 1972 foundation of the National Front 's annual tribute to Joan Of Arc in Paris (May 1, 2007)]] In 1972 , Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party, along with former OAS member Jacques Bompard , former Collaborationist Roland Gaucher and others nostalgics of Vichy France , Neo-nazi Pagans , Catholic Fundamentalist s, etc. Le Pen presented himself for the first time in the 1974 Presidential Election , obtaining 0.74%. In 1976, his Parisian flat (he lived at that time in his castle of Montretout in Saint-Denis) was dynamited. The affair never was elucidated. Le Pen then didn't manage to obtain the 500 signatures from "grand electors" (''grands électeurs'', mayors, etc.) necessary to present himself to the 1981 Presidential Election , won by the candidate of the Socialist Party (PS), François Mitterrand . Criticizing 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 votes in the 1980s, starting in the municipal elections of 1983 . His popularity has been greatest in the south of France. The FN obtained 10% at the 1984 European Elections . 34 FN deputies entered the Assembly after the 1986 Elections , which were won by the right-wing, bringing Jacques Chirac to Matignon in the first Cohabitation (that is, of the combination of a right-wing Prime minister, Chirac, with a socialist President, Mitterrand). In 1984 and 1999 , Le Pen won a seat in the European Parliament . He was deprived of his seat by the European Court Of Justice on April 10 , 2003 for physically assaulting another candidate. In 1992 and 1998 he was elected to the Regional council of Provence-Alpes-Côte D'Azur . In take up only two pages and the Gas Chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail." ; Le Pen had made a similar statement in France in 1987, which also caused him to be condemned in virtue of the Gayssot Act on negationism. In June 1999, a Munich court found this statement to be "minimizing the Holocaust , which caused the deaths of six million Jews," and convicted and fined Le Pen for his remarks.23 Le Pen ran in the French presidential elections in 1974 , 1988 , 1995 , 2002 and 2007 . He did not run for office in 1981, having failed to gather the necessary 500 signatures of elected officials. In the Presidential Elections Of 2002 , Le Pen obtained 16.86% of the votes in the first round of voting. This was enough to qualify him for the second round, as a result of the poor showing by the Socialist candidate and incumbent prime-minister Lionel Jospin and the scattering of votes among fifteen other candidates. This was a major political event, both nationally and internationally, as it was the first time someone with such extremist views had qualified for the second round of the French presidential elections. There was a widespread stirring of national public opinion, and more than one million people in France took part in street rallies, slogans such as "vote for the crook, not the fascist" were heard in an expression of fierce opposition to Le Pen's ideas. Le Pen was then soundly defeated in the second round, when incumbent president Jacques Chirac obtained 82% of the votes, thus securing the biggest majority in the history of the Fifth Republic. In the 2004 Regional Elections , Jean-Marie Le Pen intended to run for office in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region but was prevented from doing so because he did not meet the conditions for being a voter in that region: he neither lived there, nor was registered as a taxpayer there. Le Pen complained of a government plot to prevent him from running. Some argue that this event was merely a scheme of Le Pen's to avoid defeat in the election. In recent years, Le Pen has tried to soften his image, with mixed success. He has maneuvered his daughter Marine into a prominent position, a move that angered many inside the National Front, who worry about the emergence of a possible Le Pen family dynasty. ISSUES See also National Front for a summary of Le Pen's manifesto. Le Pen remains a polarizing figure in France and opinions regarding him tend to be quite strong. A 2002 top the unfavorable ratings, with 74% and 75% respectively. Le Pen and the National Front are described by much of the media and nearly all commentators Far Right . Le Pen himself and the rest of his party disagree with this label. Earlier on in his political career, Le Pen described his position as "Neither left nor right, but French" (''Ni droite, ni gauche, français''). He later described his position as right-wing and opposed to the "socialo-communists" and other right-wing parties, which he deems are not real right-wing parties. At other times, for example during the 2002 election campaign, he declared himself "economically right-wing, socially left-wing, and nationally French". He further contends that most of the French political and media class are corrupt and out of touch with the real needs of the common people, and conspire to exclude Le Pen and his party from mainstream politics. Le Pen criticizes the other political parties as the "establishment" and lumped all major parties ( PC , PS , UDF , RPR ) into the "Gang of Four" (''la bande des quatre'' – an allusion to the Gang Of Four during China 's Cultural Revolution ). The international media often cites Le Pen as a symbol of French xenophobia. He is also occasionally criticized in French and foreign pop songs. Le Pen has drawn many comparisons to Adolf Hitler's early political career in the international media. Anti-Semitism and xenophobia Le Pen has been criticized both at home and abroad for his Xenophobia and perceived Anti-Semitism . These openly verbal criticisms are considered to be unfounded by his supporters, but at several times Le Pen has been convicted for such remarks.
Prosecution concerning historical revisionism & Holocaust denial Le Pen has made several times provocative statements concerning the (183,200 Euros).6 In take up only two pages and the Gas Chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail." Le Pen had made a similar statement in France in 1987, which also caused him to be condemned in virtue of the Gayssot Act on negationism. In June 1999, a Munich court found this statement to be "minimizing the Holocaust , which caused the deaths of six million Jews," and convicted and fined Le Pen for his remarks.78 Despite several accusations, he is not a holocaust denier.http://www.freewebs.com/lepeninfo/defense.htm Prosecution, allegations of torture and association with militarists In April 2000 Le Pen was suspended from the European Parliament following prosecution for the physical Assault of Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during the 1997 general election. This ultimately led to him losing his seat in the European parliament in 2003 . Le Pen allegedly practiced '', May 17, 2003 Although , 2002 "Quand Le Pen travaillait 20 heures par jour" in '''', June 27 , 2003 Le Pen has also been criticized for ties to suspect individuals, such as:
COMMENTS ON THE RIGHT Some of Le Pen's statements led other far-right groups, such as the (FPO), which itself won international opprobrium in 1999 after entering government on a Populist platform similar to Le Pen's." and some National Front supporters to distance themselves from him. Bruno Mégret left the National Front to found his own party (the National Republican Movement , MNR), claiming that Le Pen kept the Front away from the possibility of gaining power. Mégret wanted to emulate Gianfranco Fini 's success in Italy by making it possible for right-wing parties to ally themselves with the Front, but claimed that Le Pen's attitude and outrageous speech prevented this. Le Pen's daughter Marine leads an internal movement of the Front that wants to "normalize" the National Front, "de- Enclave " it, have a "culture of government" etc.; however, relations with Le Pen and other supporters of the hard line are complex. ''( Le Canard Enchaîné , March 9, 2005'' Over the years, Le Pen gained widespread popularity among Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists throughout Europe and North America . As Le Pen, like many other European nationalists in recent years, has made statements highly critical of American foreign policy and culture, he has received notice from American conservatives. Controversial author Ann Coulter called him an anti-American adulterer and said his anti-immigration, anti-Muslim message "finally hit a nerve with voters" after years of irrelevance.9 Paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan contends that even though Le Pen "made radical and foolish statements," the EU violated his right to freedom of speech.10 He wrote: As it is often the criminal himself who is first to cry, "Thief!" so it is usually those who scream, "Fascist!" loudest who are the quickest to resort to anti-democratic tactics. Today, the greatest threat to the freedom and independence of the nations of Europe comes not from Le Pen and that 17% of French men and women who voted for him. It comes from an intolerant European Establishment that will accept no rollback of its powers or privileges, nor any reversal of policies it deems "progressive". NOTES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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