JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's postwar far-right movement, died today. He was 96. He was repeatedly charged with hate speech by French courts and ran for president five times, never winning. His daughter is current far-right leader Marine Le Pen. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports.
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JEAN-MARIE LE PEN: (Speaking French).
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Jean-Marie Le Pen has been part of the French political landscape since he founded his far-right party in 1972. His fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric has inspired the European far right today, says historian and political analyst Nicole Bacharan.
NICOLE BACHARAN: He is kind of the grandfather or the great-grandfather of the populist movement in Europe. He's the one who brought forward issues of immigration, globalization.
BEARDSLEY: Le Pen was the only child of a religious mother and a fisherman father killed at sea by a German mine in 1942. After World War II, Le Pen worked his way through law school in Paris. As a young man in the 1950s, he joined the foreign legion and fought in France's colonial wars in Indo-China and Algeria, fueled by a love of empire and a hatred of communists. Le Pen became one of the youngest members of the French Parliament in 1956. Sixteen years later, he founded his own party, the National Front - its slogan, France for the French. For years, it was on the anti-immigrant nationalist fringe.
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J LE PEN: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: A radio interview in the '80s sealed his fate. He suggested the Holocaust was a detail of history, and his political brand became, for many in France and Europe, toxic.
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J LE PEN: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: But in 2002, to everyone's surprise, Le Pen made it to the second round of the French presidential election - a fluke due to a fragmented left-wing vote and poor turnout.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting in French).
BEARDSLEY: The vote stunned the country. Millions demonstrated. Conservative candidate Jaques Chirac then crushed Le Pen with 82% of the vote in the second round. Bacharan...
BACHARAN: And it was a huge shock.
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MARINE LE PEN: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: His daughter, Marine Le Pen, took over the party in 2011, had a falling-out with her father and rebranded the movement. Unlike her father, she has a real chance of becoming president, says Bacharan.
BACHARAN: She's the heir, definitely. She wouldn't be where she is if she wasn't his daughter.
BEARDSLEY: Bacharan says Le Pen thrived on controversy for attention, but some of the ideas of the party he founded have gone mainstream in France and beyond.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE PUTH SONG, "THAT'S HILARIOUS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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