'''Jean-Marie Le Pen''' is an "[[extremist]]" [[right-wing]] French politician who ran for president in 2002 who called for stricter controls against [[immigration]] in [[France]], in order to preserve French culture. He has also denied aspects of the Holocaust, has said that the [[Nazi]] occupation of France was not severe, and said that [[AIDS]] patients should be isolated. He is the leader of the nationalist [[National Front]] party and ran in the [[2007 French presidential elections]]coming in forth with 10.4% of the vote.<ref>Le Monde [http://www.lemonde.fr/web/vi/0,47-0@2-823448,54-899922@51-899913,0.html]</ref>
His immigration policies were called racist by some of his opponents. However, his supporters were sufficiently numerous in 2002, propelling him to the [[runoff]] round of the French Presidential election, that [[Nicolas Sarkozy]] felt compelled to court them in the 2007 election by running well to the right of his predecessor [[Jacques Chirac]], who had appointed him [[interior minister]], although Sarkozy's message always emphasized [[economic]] reform, rather than immigration. This strategy paid off; Sarkozy, always a front-runner, defeated [[Socialist]] [[Ségolène Royal]] in the runoff round.
He is also famous for predicting the riots by "oppressed Africans" ([[Muslims]]) that occurred within France for several weeks in October and November 2005. His supporters, perhaps 10% of the French electorate <ref>Le Monde [http://www.lemonde.fr/web/vi/0,47-0@2-823448,54-899922@51-899913,0.html]</ref>, believe that his policies on immigration might have prevented this outbreak of violence caused by a leftist government trying to be too "politically correct". That support, for his This position on immigration policy, moved beyond the roughly 10% of the people voting for him when most of his ideas were was popular enough that Sarkozy co-opted by Sarkozy it for the run-off electionin 2007 and eventual victory.