Madonna's swastika video lands 'ageing star' in trouble in France
Madonna has landed in hot water in France. The far right National Front party is threatening to take the 53-year-old star to court after she showed an image of party leader Marine Le Pen, daughter of the party founder Jean Marie Le Pen, with a swastika superimposed on her face at a concert in Paris.
A spokesman for Le Pen, who came in third in the country’s May presidential elections, said a lawsuit for “public insult” would be filed.
Some versions of the video have been removed by YouTube. This one is the CNN version. The video had already been shown in other concerts of Madonna’s tour. It accompanies the song Nobody Knows Me and depicts the singer’s face morphing with those of public figures.
The image of 43-year-old Le Pen, who happens to be a lawyer, appears for a few seconds, with the swastika superimposed on her face right before an image that resembles Adolf Hitler comes on the screen.
Le Pen first heard of the video after it was used during a May performance in Israel, said Time magazine.
“If she tries that in France, we’ll see what happens,” Le Pen adding, . “It’s understandable … ageing singers who need publicity go to such extremes.”
Time points out that although Le Pen presides over a reactionary and Islamophobic party, she has relatively moderate positioning - not a fascist, not a Nazi and not Hitler.