Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the French far right

Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the far right in France in the 1970s and posed a strong challenge for the presidency. But only when he handed over the reins to his daughter did his renamed party see power.

His family said he died at the age of 96.

Le Pen's supporters viewed him as a charismatic everyman hero who was not afraid to speak out on difficult topics.

For decades he was viewed as France's most controversial political figure.

His critics denounced him as a far-right fanatic and the courts convicted him several times for his extremist statements.

A Holocaust denier and unrepentant extremist on race, gender and immigration, he devoted his political career to pushing himself and his views into the French political mainstream.

The so-called Devil of the Republic came in second place in the 2002 French presidential elections, but suffered a resounding defeat. This demon had to be exorcised from the National Front if it was to move forward – a process that came to be known as “demonisation”.

For his part, the five-time presidential candidate — who began his political career fighting communists and conservatives alike — described himself as “ni droite, ni gauche, français” — not right-wing, not left-wing, but French.

All the French had their opinions about Le Pen. In 2015, Marine Le Pen expelled her father from the National Front, which he founded four decades ago.

“Maybe by getting rid of me she wanted to make some sort of gesture to the establishment.” He later told BBC correspondent Hugh Schofield.

“But think how much better she would have been if she hadn't excluded me from the party!”

Jean-Marie Le Pen was born in the small Breton village of La Trinité-sur-Mer on June 20, 1928.

He lost his father when he was 14 when his fishing boat struck a German mine. Le Pen became a Nation Pavilion – The term used by the French authorities to refer to someone whose parents were injured or killed in war – giving them the right to receive state funding and support.

Two years later, he tried to join the French Resistance, but his request was rejected. He wrote in his autobiography that his first “war medal” was a “great slap” from his mother when he returned home and told her what he had tried to do.

In 1954, Le Pen joined the French Foreign Legion. He was sent to Indochina – modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, which were controlled by France at the time – and then two years later to Egypt, when France, the United Kingdom and Israel invaded the country in an attempt to control the Suez Canal. Both conflicts ended in French defeat.

But it was his time in Algeria that would define much of his politics and career.

He was posted there as an intelligence officer, when the Algerians were fighting a brutal but ultimately successful war of independence against Paris.

Le Pen considered the loss of Algeria one of the greatest betrayals in French history, which increased his hatred for the hero of World War II and then-president Charles de Gaulle, who ended the war for the colony.

During that war of independence, he was alleged to have participated in the torture of Algerian prisoners, something he has always denied.

Decades later, he unsuccessfully sued two French newspapers, Le Canard enchaîné and Libération, for publishing the allegations.

Le Pen was first elected to the French Parliament in 1956 in a party led by far-right shopkeeper leader Pierre Poujade. But they fell out and Le Pen briefly returned to the army in Algeria. By 1962, he had lost his seat in the National Assembly and had to spend the next decade in the political wilderness.

During her time as campaign manager for far-right presidential candidate Jean-Louis Tixier Vignancourt in 1965, Le Pen defended the wartime government of Marshal Pétain, who supported the occupying Nazi German forces.

“Was General de Gaulle more courageous than Marshal Pétain in the occupied zone? This is not certain. It was much easier to resist in London than in France.” He said.

During that election campaign, he lost the sight in his left eye. For several years he wore an eye patch, giving rise to stories of political hits. In fact, he lost it while setting up the tent.

“While using the hammer… trauma to my eye, I have to be hospitalized. Retinal detachment.” He would write in his memoirs years later.

Le Pen's political rise did not really begin until 1972. In that year he founded the National Front (FN), a far-right party created to unite the nationalist movement in France.

Initially, the party had little support. Le Pen ran for president in 1974 on the National Front, but won less than 1% of the vote. In 1981 he failed to even get enough signatures on his nomination form to run.

But the party gradually attracted voters with its increasingly strident anti-immigration policy.

Southern France in particular – where large numbers of immigrants from North Africa had come to settle – began to swing behind the National Front. In the 1984 European elections, he obtained 10% of the votes.

Le Pen himself won a seat in the European Parliament, which he would hold for more than 30 years.

As a member of the European Parliament, he expressed his dislike of the European Union and what he saw as interference in French affairs. The euro was later called the “occupation currency.”

But his rising political fortunes did not prevent him from expressing shocking opinions.

In an infamous 1987 interview, he downplayed the Holocaust – Nazi Germany's killing of six million Jews. He said in an interview: “I am not saying that gas chambers did not exist. I have never seen them in person.” He added: “I have never studied this issue specifically, but I think it is a detail point in the history of World War II.”

His comments about him the details He will pursue the rest of his career.

Regardless of the controversy, his popularity grew. In the 1988 presidential elections, he obtained 14% of the votes. This number rose to 15% in 1995.

Then came 2002. With opposition support split between several major candidates, Jean-Marie Le Pen was able to reach the second and final round of the presidential election.

The result shocked French society. More than a million demonstrators took to the streets to oppose Le Pen's ideas.

This far-right politician so disgusted the majority that parties from across the political spectrum called on their supporters to support President Jacques Chirac for a second term. Chirac won 82% of the votes, the largest victory in the history of French politics.

Le Pen would run again for president in 2007, but by then his political star had waned. Le Pen, then the oldest female candidate ever to run in the presidential election, came in fourth place.

Within months of that vote, newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy – whom Le Pen attacked as a “foreigner” because of his Greek, Jewish and Hungarian ancestry – exploited the National Front’s main campaign themes of national security and immigration in the legislative elections. He openly stated that he intended to go after the National Front votes.

The rug has been swept from under the National Front. Le Pen's party failed to gain a single seat in the National Assembly, and, citing financial problems, he announced plans to sell his party's headquarters outside Paris.

In 2011, he resigned as party leader and was replaced by his daughter, Marine.

Father and daughter fell over almost immediately. Marine Le Pen has deliberately distanced the party from her father's more extreme policies, to make it more attractive to Eurosceptic voters.

Then the relationship was broken beyond repair.

In 2015, Jean-Marie Le Pen repeated the details, His Holocaust denial in a radio interview. After months of bitter legal wrangling, National Front members eventually voted to expel their founder.

Two years later, during her presidential campaign, Marin changed the party's name to… National AssemblyOr the National Assembly.

Her father condemned this move and described it as suicidal.

But Jean-Marie Le Pen remained unrepentant.

“The details were in 1987. Then it came back in 2015. And that's not exactly every day!” He told the BBC in a 2017 interview.

He's even proven upbeat about the feud with his family — at least publicly.

“It's life! Life is not a calm, smooth stream,” he said.

“I'm used to adversity. For 60 years I've been paddling against the current. The wind has never had our back! No actually, the only thing we've never gotten used to is an easy life!”