Le Pen, Jean-Marie

   (adj Lepéniste)

   Born 1928.

   Founder and long-time leader of the right-wing Front National (FN) (National Front) party. In his youth, le Pen was involved with a number of extreme right-wing youth movements, and enjoyed a reputation as a brawler. A lawyer by training, le Pen served with the Foreign Legion in Algeria during the war for Algerian independence. He was first elected to the French parliament in 1956, at the age of 28, on a right-wing populist ticket. In 1972, his rise to national prominence began after he created the National Front party. Campaigning on an anti-immigration and anti-European Union platform, the FN picked up seats in municipal, regional, parliamentary and European elections. Le Pen himself was elected to the European parliament in 1984; then in 1986 he was re-elected to the French National Assembly, along with 33 other FN deputies, when proportional representation was (briefly) introduced into the election process. Since 1994, he has always been reelected to the European Parliament.

   Le Pen's most remarkable achievement, however, was in 2002, when, as a candidate in the Presidential election, he scored 16.86% of the vote, becoming one of the two candidates to go through to the second round - where he lost heavily to Jacques Chirac..

   During his turbulent life, Le Pen has had a number of run-ins with the law, including the following examples and several more. In 1971 he was found guilty of "apologies for war crimes". In 1987 he received the first of several condemnations for inciting racial hatred. In the same year, he caused outrage by sugggesting that the Auschwitz gas chambers were merely "a detail of history". In 1991 he was condemned for "banalising crimes against humanity". In 2008 he was condemned to a suspended prison sentence for apologising for war crimes and denying crimes against humanity.