By Marine Strauss
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Vandals have damaged the grave of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-right National Front, his family said on Friday.
Le Pen’s granddaughter Marion Marechal said on her X account that the grave, in the cemetery of La Trinité-sur-Mer in Brittany, had been discovered defaced on Friday, three weeks after his death aged 96.
“You’ve destroyed the grave of our ancestors. Do you think you can break our hearts, intimidate us, discourage us? Our response will be to fight you ever harder, generation after generation. Our determination will match your infamy,” Marechal wrote on X.
Le Pen was a controversial figure in France, tapping into white working class anger over immigration and globalisation and also minimising the Holocaust. Hundreds of people celebrated in central Paris when his death was announced.
His daughter Marine Le Pen, who took over his party, renamed it the National Rally and has sought to broaden its appeal to more centrist voters, could become France’s next president in 2027.
Asked about the desecration of the grave, National Rally lawmaker Jean-Philippe Tanguy told reporters the vandalism would have no impact whatsoever on the party’s policies.
“I imagine this was done by the same riffraff who celebrated his death of a man on the Place de la Republique. It says everything about them and nothing about us,” Tanguy said.
(Reporting by Marine Strauss; Editing by GV De Clercq and Gareth Jones)
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