Jean-Marie Le Pen's shadow looms over the French presidential election even though the almost 94-year-old far-right politician is trying to keep a very low profile, so as not to hurt his daughter's chances of making history and becoming the first woman and nationalist representative to take the presidency.
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Marine Le Pen is sparing no effort to convince voters she is very different from her controversial father. Her opponent, incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, is doing everything he can to tie Le Pen to her father and paint her as a representative of the far-right.
For decades, Le Pen the senior has been the "bad boy" of French politics. Statements such as that the Holocaust was only a "minor detail" of World War II labeled him as an extremist, an antisemite, and a racist right-winger. The founder of the National Front party, who studied law, was indicted several times, among other things for inciting racism, hatred, and defending Nazi war crimes.
For his part, Le Pen claimed to be politically persecuted by the legal system and was able to shock France when, exactly 20 years ago, he qualified for the second round of the presidential election against then-President Jacques Chirac. Moreover, despite all rival political forces across the political spectrum converging against him, Le Pen managed to secure about 18% – or 5.5 million – of the votes.
Marine, who back then joined her father's campaign, has since been desperate to shed the radical political image associated with her family's name and her party. So much so that in 2015, when Le Pen again made remarks downplaying the Holocaust, his daughter removed him from the party he founded in 1972. He took the party to court over his ouster and it was years before it became official, but Le Pen remained the honorary president of the National Front until he retired from politics three years ago.
Le Pen the senior vehemently opposed Marine's decision to change the party's name to the National Rally, and early on in the 2022 presidential campaign even endorsed her rival Eric Zemmour. Recently, however, the two have reconciled and Le Pen endorsed his daughter for the role.
Personal tensions aside, Le Pen acknowledges that his daughter has turned his party from a marginal political faction into a significant force that twice qualified for the second round of the presidential election.
Despite his advanced age, Le Pen continues to be active and travels daily to his office.
"Given my age, I have no reason to complain. I feel good," he said.
Q: Do you think Marine has any real chance of becoming president?
"I hope that she wins the presidential election," he says. "I can't contribute much beyond voting for her. That's all I can give her now. She ran her campaign at a pretty high level, in my opinion. Her opponent is the president, and he certainly has more means to ensure his re-election. We'll see what happens. It's the people's choice."
Q: Macron treats Marine as your successor, to emphasize the connection between you and thus label her in a certain way. Do you see her as an extension of your activity or as something else entirely?
"As a woman, she is more moderate in her statements and behavior. However, the current political situation is not similar to the one in which I operated. It is therefore difficult to compare political statements without placing them in the context in which they were said, the period in which they were said, and the events of that period.
"Given the current general context, I think that her campaign went well. I've been on this road several times and it's hard when you are in the opposition."
Q: Other right-wingers, including Zemmour, have accused Marine of veering left in her campaign. Do you agree?
"I don't think so. Eric – I love him very much – he has a lot of advantages and he had a very nice campaign himself, is perhaps disappointed with the result he got, because he was faced with some pretty cruel truths."
Q: Ahead of her debate with Macron, Marine posted a video calling on voters not to believe those who say she and her party are far-right. This is hanging over her head.
"That is her rivals' main argument, saying she's far-right. What does 'far-right' mean? You never hear anyone say 'far' about the Left. No one ever says that of Jean-Luc Melenchon," he said, referring to the leader of the La France Insoumise ("France Unbowed") party, who came third in the first round of the elections. "No one ever says that of the communists, either. It's a term reserved only for the Right, and it seemingly embodies some sort of spell. This is the chief argument of the opponents of the National Front and is used in general by those who oppose the national, popular, and social line of the Right, which Marine represents, in my opinion."
Q: France's conservative Right has almost completely disappeared in this election.
"Not just them but also the Socialist Party. The classical parties were swept away by the winds of history and were replaced with what? Personalities came in place of political labels. And so, we have a struggle between Macron and Le Pen. Politics is inherent in the people and there is no longer a need for political platforms and plans."
Q: Looking at France today, are you concerned?
"Yes," Le Pen said. "I'm worried about France and Europe because of the demographic crisis. Few people are aware of the fact that over the last 50 years there has been an ongoing demographic revolution. The world's population has grown during this period from two billion to eight billion people, without the gross resources increasing significantly. That is, the number of resources that can be allocated is dwindling.
"As this development is growing, one should expect increasing difficulties at the national, European, and international levels in dealing with this population explosion."
Q: When you see Marins's relative success compared to yours do you regret certain things you did or said?
"I have no regrets," he asserted. "I always did the best I could. For better or worse, I defended ideas that were not always fashionable, especially in the eyes of the incumbent administration. I've spent my entire life on the benches of the opposition, and I have fought with loyalty and courage.
"I apologize for complimenting myself, but I think it's true. I struggled to defend the ideas I believed were right and I think experience has proven me right."
Q: How did we get to the point where a Jewish presidential candidate calls on voters to elect a Le Pen? Thirty years ago such a thing would have been unthinkable.
"Why not? I carry with me a reputation of being antisemitic, which my political opponents invented. I challenge them to find one political statement I made that is antisemitic. Just because I am right-wing and nationalist I've been accused of being an antisemite. This is utterly untrue. Nothing in my life shows or expresses anti-Semitism."
Q: How do you explain the fact that a Jew expresses identical positions to yours, which were considered extremist? What happened in France? Is it because of Islamist violence?
"This is not surprising. There were Jewish delegates at the National Rally, who were affiliated with the Right and even the far-right. There is certainly an antisemitic phenomenon that should bother Jewish organizations instead of persecuting the Right, namely the Islamist danger, which exists among larger populations and represents aggressive action. This is not the case with the people who those Jewish organizations tend to automatically condemn."
Q: If Marine doesn't win the elections this time, do you think she will run again in five years or retire?
"I don't know. Who can say where we'll be in five years? I think current conditions are quite dangerous. Demographically, our numbers are declining compared to the rest of the world, and it seems to me that intellectual, moral, and artistic vitality is declining in general. It seems to me that civilization is experiencing a period of mediocrity and if it continues much longer, it will lead to our disappearance."
Q: What do you think of other national right-wing parties in Europe? Austria, Italy, Germany?
"It's normal for the national political factions to mark achievements – that doesn't surprise me, it's part of the natural reflexes of nations. These parties' plans vary from country to country, but there is nothing terrible about it. They do not support a dictatorship or the persecution of anyone and they are neither racist nor extremist in their philosophical, political, or economic positions.
"The struggle waged against us was, in fact, waged against fantasies that are probably inferior to the historical past of Europe," he explains.
"I have been in politics for over 60 years. I think if there had been any justification for hostility against me on the part of certain circles I would have disappeared a long time ago. But I stayed true to myself and my ideas, and there have always been several million Frenchpeople who supported those ideas. They didn't want a dictatorship, antisemitism, or other things that were never included in my platform, my speeches, or my private life."
Q: What is the secret of the National Front – the National Rally's – survival compared to other populist right-wing parties that have disappeared?
"You can ask the same of the rhinos, who have survived for so long," Le Pen laughs. "They have thick skin. They hold up well against attacks. In retrospect, I think that my opponents secretly share my views, but they dare not say so."
Q: Were you offended when your daughter pushed you out of the party?
"I can't say I was too happy about it – being the party's founder and leader for 40 years, to be ousted by a small, destructive group of people. However, I will tell you a secret: I didn't lose sleep over it. It was meaningless to me – not a move that reflected any reality. Some people saw me as a distraction. They thought that my positions over the past 60 years reflected rigidity. To me, rigidity is a virtue.
"In all honesty, now, at the end of my life, I have no regrets. Perhaps maybe one: when I ran another presidential candidate on our behalf in 1965. I should have run. I was the one who organized the entire campaign but at the time, I thought I was too young.
"So I backed someone else, who brought to the campaign a certain reputation that was important to us. This is my only regret in my political life. Still, that hasn't stopped the world from turning on its axis."
Q: Who among your political rivals, who are almost all gone, did you value the most?
"That's easy – Charles de Gaulle. It has to do with its historical trajectory. Without World War II, Col. de Gaulle would have ended up at home with a military pension. The war allowed him to take a position that grew stronger over time, and the events eliminated his potential rivals."
Q: Do you follow events in the Middle East? In Israel?
"Of course, with sympathy for the small nation that fought for its survival and existence, and managed to seize its ancestral land. I have always been friendly towards it [Israel] than adversarial," he said, adding, "I fought alongside Israeli soldiers in the Sinai War in 1956. I was among the French paratroopers who parachuted into the Suez Canal. The Israelis came up behind us and took Sinai.
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