PROFILE: Jean-Marie Le Pen

Bulky and theatrical, with exaggerated gestures and a booming voice, Jean-Marie Le Pen has never had trouble attracting attention. But in this year's presidential race, the extreme-right leader has had more of it than at any time during his three decades in French politics.

He has clearly cherished the moment. As street protests against him swelled during the two weeks after his stunning showing in the election's first round, Le Pen complained almost gleefully: "I've become a factor of national unity!"

His many critics would say he sows discord rather than unity -- discord of the worst kind, based on fear and hate. Le Pen has spent his career preaching the evils of immigration -- especially of Muslims from North Africa -- which he sees as a scourge threatening the identity and very existence of France.

"This worrying phenomenon imposes on us its customs, its habits, its religion and is stealing our soul," Le Pen has said. "The tide of immigration is going to submerge us after ruining us."

This year, he has been able to capitalize on his compatriots' tangible fears of rising crime, linking the problem to immigration and boasting that he is the only candidate brave enough to do so. Many French people believe the government has yet to get serious about crime.

Le Pen stunned the nation by coming in second in the April 21 vote with nearly 17 percent, besting Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and qualifying for Sunday's runoff against President Jacques Chirac.

"France and the French first" is the theme of Le Pen's National Front party, touching on everything from jobs to housing to health care. Besides deporting illegal immigrants, Le Pen wants France to withdraw from the European Union, restore the franc as currency, bring back the death penalty, abolish the income tax and do away with abortion.

But whatever his platform, it is Le Pen's words that mark his career -- words that many consider racist, anti-Semitic or simply tasteless. He has been convicted and fined five times for such statements, including once for calling the Nazi gas chambers "a detail of the history of the Second World War."

He also has been quoted as saying that AIDS sufferers "are sweating the disease through their pores, calling into question the stability of the nation."

This year, it seemed that Le Pen was softening at age 73. During the campaign for the election's first round he toned down his rhetoric, presenting a more genteel image probably aimed at gaining mainstream support.

But the toned-down Le Pen did not last very long. A few days later, he proposed "transit camps" to house illegal aliens awaiting deportation and even a "special train" to ship immigrants to Britain evoking Nazi-era language that had a chilling resonance for Europeans who lived through the Holocaust.

Born in the Brittany region of western France, Le Pen joined the Foreign Legion in 1954. He is a former paratrooper who fought in Indochina and Algeria.

After working for another far-right candidte, he set up the National Front in 1972. Slowly, it gained political force.

Although many are repelled by Le Pen's words, his ideas clearly resonate in some form for a large swath of French society. Sofres, a top polling firm, says one in four French people have voted for Le Pen or his party at some point.

Still, Le Pen never has been accepted by the political establishment. For a mainstream politician, just talking to Le Pen or his party can be politically suicidal.

During the campaign, Chirac denied allegations he met with Le Pen between rounds of the 1988 presidential vote to discuss uniting the right wing.

Despite the neat suits and coiffed silver hair, quick wit and sharp tongue, Le Pen comes across as somewhat bullying and boorish. He lost an eye in a street fight and he physically assaulted a female politician during the 1997 legislative campaign, resulting in a yearlong ban from public office.

As his party's symbol, Le Pen adopted Joan of Arc, the 15th-century peasant girl who led a series of military victories against the English before being burned at the stake. For him, Joan was a true patriot, resisting foreign invaders.

Le Pen is "the Joan of Arc of our times," said supporter Maurice Dumontot, a 58-year-old retired police brigadier, watching Le Pen lay flowers at Joan's statue in Paris on Wednesday.

"He's our only chance to put things in order, to stop all the crime and have people respect our laws."