\n<\/p>\n
For years, France\u2019s main far-right party tried to distance itself from the long trail of inflammatory and derogatory comments made by Jean-Marie Le Pen, its founding president.<\/p>\n
His daughter, who took the party reins in 2011, kicked him out<\/a>. It changed its name<\/a>, from National Front to National Rally. And the party \u2014 long run by Mr. Le Pen, who called Hitler\u2019s gas chambers \u201ca detail\u201d of history \u2014 has made a point of decrying antisemitism.<\/p>\n But when Mr. Le Pen died on Tuesday<\/a> at 96, the party nuzzled him deeply in its fold, its leaders celebrating him<\/a> as a visionary, an \u201cimmense patriot\u201d and a \u201ccourageous and talented politician.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe will remain the one who, in the storms, held in his hands the small flickering flame of the French Nation,\u201d the National Rally said in a statement<\/a>, adding that his \u201cwill and unwavering tenacity\u201d had shaped the party into an \u201cautonomous, powerful and free\u201d force.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There was nothing in the statement to indicate disagreement with Mr. Le Pen\u2019s views or his caustic remarks. At most, it said he had been \u201cunruly and sometimes turbulent,\u201d often fond of controversy.<\/p>\n Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right at the Jean-Jaur\u00e8s Foundation, said that the strategy of Marine Le Pen, Mr. Le Pen\u2019s daughter and successor, \u201cwas always to set herself apart without taking full stock\u201d of her father\u2019s unsavory legacy. It was too early to tell whether she might yet do so now, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cA venerable age had taken the warrior but given us back our father\u201d Ms. Le Pen, who is no longer party president but still a top lawmaker and leading force in the party, said<\/a> in a short tribute on Wednesday. \u201cDeath has taken him back.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, the party does not appear to be headed down a path of deep introspection. Instead, Mr. Camus said, it seems to be trying to \u201cre-inject\u201d a new version of Mr. Le Pen into France\u2019s collective memory, safe in the knowledge that there will be no more racist or antisemitic outbursts from him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Renaud Labaye, the National Rally\u2019s general secretary in the lower house of Parliament, said the party had already weighed in on Mr. Le Pen\u2019s past.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was precisely his expulsion \u2014 an act made all the stronger by the fact that it was initiated by his daughter and that he was the party\u2019s founder \u2014 that underlined the fact that his excesses and reprehensible positions were firmly condemned by the party,\u201d Mr. Labaye said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For decades, Mr. Le Pen was a pariah of French politics, considered so odious that many opponents refused to debate him. That had much to do with the party\u2019s history: Its founders in 1972 included former Nazi soldiers, collaborators with the wartime Vichy regime and onetime members of a group that carried out deadly attacks meant to thwart Algeria\u2019s struggle to free itself from French colonial rule.<\/p>\n Mr. Le Pen\u2019s openly racist, antisemitic and anti-gay comments cemented the public\u2019s perception of the party. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Le Pen, who was in paratrooper units in two colonial wars to suppress the independence movements in Vietnam and Algeria, once said that races \u201cdo not have the same abilities, nor the same level of historical evolution,\u201d and he was repeatedly convicted of making antisemitic comments<\/a> and publicly downplaying the Holocaust. He once compared homosexuality to pedophilia<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2002, after Mr. Le Pen surprised many by making it to the second round of the presidential election, left-wing parties called on their members to vote for his conservative opponent, Jacques Chirac. This was the most famous use of a strategy known in French politics as a \u201crepublican front,\u201d which has since been used multiple times to stop the far right from taking power.<\/p>\n In that 2002 election, Mr. Le Pen won less than 18 percent of the vote. But when his daughter took over, she began what became known as an \u201cundemonization\u201d strategy, to cleanse the party\u2019s image and broaden its appeal<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She distanced herself from her father\u2019s antisemitic statements, declaring concentration camps \u201cthe height of barbarity.\u201d She ousted her father from the party in 2015, when he was its honorary president, and said his repeated Holocaust denial showed that \u201chis goal is to cause harm\u201d to the party. Three years later, she renamed it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Now the National Rally \u2014 after riding successive waves of fear and anger over unchecked immigration, rising inflation and deadly terrorism \u2014 is no longer on the fringes of French politics, with some of its policies more widely accepted.<\/p>\n Last summer, during a snap election, another republican front between left-wing and centrist parties prevented a far-right victory<\/a>. Still, a record 124 National Rally lawmakers now sit in the powerful lower house of Parliament, making it the largest single opposition party.<\/p>\n Though Ms. Le Pen has softened some of the party\u2019s initial hard-line stances, its bedrock focus on identity and its eagerness to change the French Constitution to restrict the rights of foreigners mark it in France as a far-right party, according to experts. <\/span>Party members argue, for instance, that French people should have priority over even legal migrants in areas like certain social benefits and subsidized housing. That runs counter to the French constitution and Republican ideals, set during the revolution of 1789, which make all people equal, Mr. Camus said.<\/p>\n Many experts have characterized<\/a> Ms. Le Pen\u2019s \u201cundemonization\u201d campaign as mere marketing, and in the election last summer, many National Rally candidates were castigated<\/a> for past racist or antisemitic remarks. <\/p>\n Some analysts said the party had no choice but to recognize Mr. Le Pen\u2019s integral role in building its long-lasting, stable and successful movement, which is still dominated by his family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But the party\u2019s glowing remembrance of Mr. Le Pen was also a way to recast his image \u2014 and its own, some experts said. <\/p>\n \u201cPaying tribute to Le Pen \u2018undemonizes\u2019 the party even further\u201d by portraying him as an excessive but prescient politician, unfairly condemned for warning about the dangers of immigration, said Nicolas Lebourg, a historian who specializes in the far right.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who voted for the first time last year have almost no memory of him,\u201d Mr. Lebourg said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The tributes, from the party and others, are also evidence that Mr. Le Pen\u2019s ideas \u2014 like drastically stemming immigration \u2014 are increasingly part of the mainstream.<\/p>\n \u201cThe importance that Jean-Marie Le Pen has had in our political life is the consequence of long years of denial and powerlessness on the migration issue,\u201d wrote<\/a> Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Bellamy, the leader in the European Parliament of the mainstream conservative Republican party, which historically despised Mr. Le Pen and was thrown into turmoil last year when its then-leader advocated an alliance with the National Rally.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThose who insult him even in death refuse to first look at their failures,\u201d Mr. Bellamy said.<\/p>\n In an interview<\/a> with The New York Times in 2018, Mr. Le Pen assessed his own influence: \u201cMy ideas have made progress, even in the programs of my opponents,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why my struggle was not without value.\u201d<\/p>\n Even in death, however, he retains many political enemies, especially on the left. Crowds of hundreds gathered in several cities across France to celebrate his death Tuesday night.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, he was not a \u2018great servant of France,\u2019\u201d wrote<\/a> Manuel Bompard, national coordinator for the far-left party France Unbowed<\/a>. \u201cHe was an enemy of the Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n