PARIS: The co-founder of France’s main postwar far-right movement Jean-Marie Le Pen divided the country even beyond the grave on Wednesday, with the government slamming street celebrations that took place in some French cities after his death. Le Pen, co-founder of the National Front (FN) died on Tuesday aged 96, leaving a legacy which the French presidency said would be judged by history. The right praised his contribution to politics but the left hailed the demonstrations and branded him a “fascist” who was openly racist and anti-Semitic.

In the hours after his death, hundreds of people took to the streets in several cities in France to celebrate his demise, singing, letting off fireworks and toasting with champagne. Jubilant opponents of Le Pen cheered as they gathered in Place de la Republique in central Paris for what they dubbed an “apero geant” (giant aperitif), brandishing placards including “the dirty racist is dead” and “a beautiful day”.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies dancing on a corpse. The death of a man, even if he is a political opponent, should inspire only

restraint and dignity,” Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau wrote on X. “These scenes of jubilation are simply shameful,” he added. Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu told Europe 1 radio: “The political struggle is for the living, so we must continue with the living but respect the dead. It is a question of dignity.” Government spokesperson Sophie Primas said the “dead” had the right to “respect” even though Le Pen made “completely unacceptable remarks” and “acted in sometimes unacceptable ways”.

In the southeastern city of Lyon, seven people were arrested after rubbish bins were burned and projectiles thrown at the police during a rally called by the hard-left and attended by some 600 people. Police said three people were arrested at the Paris rally that gathered 650 people. But the parliamentary whip of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), Mathilde Panot, said the demonstrations echoed the “spirit of Charlie”.

Le Pen’s death coincided with the 10th anniversary of the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper by Islamist attackers that led to well-attended street marches in defense of freedom of expression. The far-right-winger was an “enemy of the Republic”, Panot told RTL radio. Socialist MP Jerome Guedj told Public Senat TV that while “I find it wrong to rejoice at the death of a man, I also find it wrong to sugarcoat his career”.

In a tribute on X, French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said Le Pen was a “fighter” and a “figure of French political life”, a comment that enraged the hard-left. “Jean-Marie Le Pen was not just ‘a figure of French political life’ as Francois Bayrou said. Respect for the deceased must not lead to blindness to his career,” said the leader of the LFI’s MPs in the European Parliament, Manon Aubry, describing Le Pen as “a notorious racist and anti-Semite”.

“Jean-Marie Le Pen may be well and truly dead, but he is still here,” commented the Le Monde daily, describing him as a “Trumpian character before his time” in reference to the US president-elect. A family funeral for Le Pen is to be held on Saturday in his hometown of La Trinite-sur-Mer in Brittany.

His political mantle was taken by his daughter Marine but she moved emphatically to distance the movement from the legacy of her father, renaming the party the National Rally (RN) and expelling him from the party as part of a process dubbed “dediabolisation” (de-demonization) to make it electable.

In her first public reaction, Marine Le Pen on Wednesday called her father a “warrior”, adding that “many” people were mourning him. Marine Le Pen had been returning from a visit to the cyclone-ravaged French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte when news broke of her father’s death. The RN’s deputy leader Louis Aliot confirmed reports that she had learned of the death of her father from reporters travelling with her. “We were on the plane in Nairobi where we made a technical stopover,” and it was in the Kenyan capital “that journalists who were on the flight informed us of the death”, he told TF1 television channel. – AFP