<p>Paris: Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right National Front party who tapped into working class concerns over immigration and globalisation, shaking up the French political establishment, has died at the age of 96.</p><p>His death was confirmed by his daughter Marine Le Pen's political party, National Rally.</p><p>A pugnacious mix of populism, eloquence and charisma, Le Pen helped rewrite the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, in harnessing voter discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump's rise to the White House.</p>.<p>In one way or another, Jean-Marie Le Pen spent his life fighting, whether as a soldier in France's colonial wars, as a founder of the far-right National Front party, for which he contested five presidential elections, or in feuds with his daughters and ex-wife, often conducted publicly and furiously.</p><p>He stunned the world by reaching a presidential election run-off in 2002, then losing in a landslide to Jacques Chirac as voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s.</p><p>An unabashed nationalist, Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment that saw Britain vote to leave the EU.</p><p>Controversy was Le Pen's constant companion: accusations of racism dogged the National Front from the moment he co-founded the party in 1972.</p><p>He was tried, convicted and fined in 1996 for contesting war crimes after declaring that the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail" of World War Two history.</p><p>The comment provoked outrage in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1942.</p><p>"I stand by this because I believe it is the truth," he said in 2015 when asked if he regretted the comment.</p><p>National Rally chief Jordan Bardella confirmed Jean-Marie Le Pen's death on the social media platform X.</p>
<p>Paris: Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right National Front party who tapped into working class concerns over immigration and globalisation, shaking up the French political establishment, has died at the age of 96.</p><p>His death was confirmed by his daughter Marine Le Pen's political party, National Rally.</p><p>A pugnacious mix of populism, eloquence and charisma, Le Pen helped rewrite the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, in harnessing voter discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump's rise to the White House.</p>.<p>In one way or another, Jean-Marie Le Pen spent his life fighting, whether as a soldier in France's colonial wars, as a founder of the far-right National Front party, for which he contested five presidential elections, or in feuds with his daughters and ex-wife, often conducted publicly and furiously.</p><p>He stunned the world by reaching a presidential election run-off in 2002, then losing in a landslide to Jacques Chirac as voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s.</p><p>An unabashed nationalist, Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment that saw Britain vote to leave the EU.</p><p>Controversy was Le Pen's constant companion: accusations of racism dogged the National Front from the moment he co-founded the party in 1972.</p><p>He was tried, convicted and fined in 1996 for contesting war crimes after declaring that the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail" of World War Two history.</p><p>The comment provoked outrage in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1942.</p><p>"I stand by this because I believe it is the truth," he said in 2015 when asked if he regretted the comment.</p><p>National Rally chief Jordan Bardella confirmed Jean-Marie Le Pen's death on the social media platform X.</p>