Jean Marie Le Pen (born 1928) was a French political activist who led the radical right to its most important, although limited, electoral successes since World War II.

Born in the Breton fishing port of La Trinité-sur-Mer in 1928, Jean Marie Le Pen became a "national orphan" when his fisherman father was lost at sea in 1942. After a Jesuit education, he studied law in Paris, where he became president of the law students' "corporation" and began his career of radical rightist, anti-communist activity. Le Pen left his studies to enroll in the elite 1st Foreign Paratroop Battalion and served in the final months of the 1954 Indochina campaign.

Elected Deputy

Back in Paris, he came to the notice of the shopkeeper turned radical-right politician Pierre Poujade, on whose list he was elected deputy for the Seine in 1956. Le Pen soon broke with Poujade, joining the Centre National des ind...