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Summary
Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France’s far-right National Rally (formerly National Front), has died.
A former paratrooper, he led the party from 1972 to 2011 and was known for inflammatory rhetoric, including Holocaust denial and praise for the Nazi-collaborating Vichy regime, which led to multiple convictions.
He ran for president five times, shocking France in 2002 by advancing to the runoff against Jacques Chirac.
A divisive figure, he was expelled from the party by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, in 2015 as she sought to moderate its image.
I’ll never wish death on a person. That’s a line I can’t cross and still think of myself as a good person. That said, I have no problem celebrating a terrible person’s death.
“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
Many of those terrible people don’t give you the same courtesy though…