He had anticipated it, visualized it, and commented on it for years. Jean-Marie Le Pen had no fear of his own death, which occurred on January 7. His successors, however, had more to worry about. They genuinely did not know how the French public, the press, and the political class would react – or what the potential political repercussions might be. The pitfalls were numerous. For the Rassemblement National (RN), these pitfalls appeared to have been avoided. In many ways, the event offered a paradoxical perspective: the Le Pen family seemed to gain humanity – long perceived as a weak point in public opinion polls – just as they paid tribute to their most hated representative and were united in communion with the radical fringes of the far right.
Marine Le Pen's movement feared division within its ranks, between the senior members and MPs who joined the party out of admiration for Jean-Marie Le Pen and those who only joined after he was excluded from the party by his daughter. Like what happened in October 2023, when an RN MP called the cofounder antisemitic after party president Jordan Bardella had said the opposite. In 2025, the respect owed to the deceased allowed all the elected officials, regardless of their stance, to focus only on the aspects of his legacy they found most valuable.
"If there's a dissolution in July, the RN's opponents could criticize this solidarity with Jean-Marie Le Pen. But in two years, time will have done its work," said historian Nicolas Lebourg, an expert on the party. Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of Political Radicalisms, observed that "anyone who thought Jean-Marie Le Pen's death would mark a breaking point misunderstands the psychology of this political family, where repentance is not the norm."
Avoiding Celtic crosses
The two ceremonies honoring Le Pen – one in his stronghold of La Trinité-sur-Mer, in Brittany, on Saturday, January 11, and the other at Notre-Dame du Val-de-Grâce in Paris five days later – had also been a source of concern for the party. Although they were moments of family communion, they were also highly political. In the Breton village, the ceremony announced as "strictly private" featured employees from e-Politic, the RN's communications agency, filming the Le Pen family's slow walk to the church, as revealed by Libération. A pamphlet selectively revisiting Le Pen's political legacy was distributed. Far from being boycotted, news channels closely documented the family's emotions.
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