French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has said she will never forgive herself for expelling her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, from her party, after he died last week aged 96. Nicknamed "the devil of the Republic" by his opponents, Jean-Marie Le Pen was often openly racist, made no secret of his anti-Semitic views, for which he received criminal convictions. He also told Le Monde about torturing prisoners during the Algerian war.
Marine Le Pen took over as head of the far-right Front Nationa in 2011 but rapidly took steps toward making the party an electable force, renaming it the Rassemblement National (RN) and embarking on a policy known as "dédiabolisation" ("de-demonisation"). She expelled her father from the party for his anti-Semitic views in 2015, but the pair had reconciled in recent years.
"I will never forgive myself for this decision, because I know it caused him immense pain," she told the Journal du dimanche newspaper in an interview published on its website on Sunday, January 12. "Making this decision was one of the most difficult of my life. And until the end of my existence, I will always ask myself the question: 'Could I have done this differently?'"
Jean-Marie Le Pen declared in 1987 that the Nazi gas chambers used to exterminate Jews in concentration camps were "just a detail in the history of World War II". In 2014, he said of Patrick Bruel, a Jewish singer critical of Le Pen, that he would be part of a "batch, next time."
Addressing such remarks, Marine Le Pen said: "It's somewhat unfair to judge him solely on the basis of these controversies." After his long political career, "it is inevitable to have subjects that arouse controversy," she argued, while saying it was "unfortunate" that Jean-Marie Le Pen "got bogged down in these provocations." The problem was that he kept "doing it again," she said.
The interview marked a rare insight from Marine Le Pen into her relationship with her father, who was buried on Saturday in a quiet family ceremony in his home region of Brittany, western France.
Marine Le Pen, who has run for president three times and is likely preparing for another run in 2027, is extremely discreet about her private and family life. News magazine Paris Match posted a picture of Marine Le Pen in tears upon being informed of her father's death, but deleted the image following protests from the RN.
Jean-Marie Le Pen's death was announced to news agency AFP on Tuesday, January 7 in a statement signed "Le Pen Family". But Marine Le Pen, who was on a plane returning from the cyclone-ravaged French island of Mayotte to mainland France, only learned of the news later during a stopover in Nairobi.
Some French media have interpreted this as a sign of conflict within her family, and with her two sisters, Marie-Caroline and Yann. She said: "At the time, I didn't believe it [his death]. Then, knowing that he was in very fragile health, I called my sister to find out what was going on. And she was the one who told me."