Madonna to appear in Paris again as Front National sues over swastika video

Will Madonna risk further legal action in France by showing a video in which a swastika appears on Front National (FN) leader Marine Le Pen’s forehead when she performs in Paris on 26 July and in Nice on 21 August?

Reuters/Yves Herman

The far-right party on Thursday filed a case against the Queen of Pop for allegedly “insulting” the FN chief, who inherited the party’s leadership from her father last year, in a video projected at her concert in Paris on 14 July.

During the video Le Pen's face appears and a swastika is collaged onto her forehead.

“In reality it was said that she is a Nazi,” declares the FN’s case for prosecution of “Madame Madonna Ciccone” and everyone else involved in the show.

Madonna is to give a concert at Paris’s Olympia concert hall on 26 July and in Nice in 21 August.

It is as yet unclear whether the video will be projected during these performances.

After she first showed the video at a concert in Tel Aviv the FN threatened to take legal action, later declaring that it would do so if she did so in France.

At the time Le Pen (43) sarcastically referred to “old singers who need to attract publicity” who “go to such extremes”. Madonna (54) proved insensitive to the barb and the legal threat.

The case has now been filed at a court in Bobigny, near Paris.

The crime of “public insult” is punishable by a fine of 12,000 euros. Madonna was worth about 270 million euros in 2007, according to Forbes magazine.

Le Pen has been trying to clean up her party’s image since taking over from her father. Although some of the FN’s founding members were former collaborators with the German occupation of France, she has condemned the Nazis’ attempts to exterminate the Jews.