France’s far right to sue Madonna over Le Pen swastika image

France’s far-right National Front plans to sue Madonna after the singer showed a video at a Paris concert that contained an image of the party’s leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead.

The video has been shown at other concerts on the singer’s tour, and the party has expressed its outrage before, warning that it would take action if the video were shown in France. On Saturday night, Madonna played it at the Stade de France.

National Front spokesman Alain Vizier yesterday said that the party would file a complaint in French court next week for “insults.”

“We cannot accept such an odious comparison,” National Front vice-president Florian Philippot added, also saying that the legal action would be filed this week.

“This is just another provocation in Madonna’s world tour so that people will talk about her,” Mr Philippot said, claiming that the stadium was “far from full” for Madonna’s gig and that the tour was a “fiasco”.

“Marine Le Pen will defend not only her own honour but her supporters and the millions of National Front voters.”

Ms Le Pen is briefly pictured in the video for the song Nobody Knows Me during a montage in which a number of famous faces – or parts of faces – morph one into the next.

There was an audible gasp from the audience at the Stade de France when the image of Ms Le Pen appeared briefly on a giant screen in a video clip which also showed Madonna’s face merging with a number of public figures, including Pope Benedict XVI and fallen Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Ms Le Pen, a French presidential candidate, had already warned the US superstar in June that she was considering legal action after the video was shown at a Tel Aviv gig in May when 
Madonna, 53, started her world tour.

Ms Le Pen, who inherited control of the party from her father, has tried to shed the National Front’s image as racist and anti-Semitic, especially during her recent failed bid for president. 
But she has maintained a hard line on immigrants, saying France has too many and criticising many Muslims, in 
particular, for insufficiently assimilating into French culture.

Meanwhile, the anti-racism group SOS Racisme has 
expressed its support for Madonna, commending the superstar for her “resolutely 
anti-racist and feminist discourse.”

Tour promoter LiveNation declined to comment on the National Front action against the Queen of Pop, who has been no stranger to controversy during her long career.

In 1987, Madonna caused a stir when she threw her knickers into the crowd at a concert where then president Jacques Chirac was in attendance.

On her latest world tour, she made headlines when she flashed a nipple at a gig in Turkey’s largest city of Istanbul last month.

Ms Le Pen, the daughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, won 18 per cent in the first round of the presidential election in April.

But she lost her bid to win a seat in legislative elections last month although the party –which wants to ditch the euro and battles against what Ms Le Pen calls the “Islamisation” of France – returned to parliament for the first time since 1998.

The party won only two seats in the 577-member National Assembly in last month’s legislative elections, partly due to France’s first-past-the-post system.