Eyes of Marine Le Pen, chief of France’s Front National (National Front,)

with a swastika across her forehead, superimposed on Madonna's face,

in a video from Madonna’s current world tour. Le Pen is set to sue her

for defamation. Being connected with Nazis is a very sensitive topic in

Europe. The Front is Euro-skeptic, anti-immigration and protectionist.

Madonna ‘Affronts’ France’s Extreme Right National Front (La Nouvelle Republique, France)

“Projecting Marine Le Pen’s image with a swastika is like calling her a Nazi. That must be considered a very serious insult, and looking at the facts, defamation to be more precise. A complaint will be filed during the course of the week.”

-- Me Wallerand Saint-Just, Attorney for France’s National Front

Translated By Francesca Iwandza

July 16, 2012

La Nouvelle Republique - France - Original Article (French)

The American singer delights her audience, projecting a clip in which Marine Le Pen appears superimposed with a swastika ...  and unleashes the wrath at the Front National.

A great artist, to be sure. A great voice, a talented composer, and even a convincing film director. But also a dedicated provocateur. For Madonna could have based her career solely on her talent, but decided early on to build a public image with edge. Titillating outfits and ambiguous gestures on stage, engaging or deliberately shocking lyrics, hot clips: the 53-years-old American star accumulates as much success as she does provocation.

The most recent is a music video from one of her titles, Nobody Knows Me, projected onstage early in concerts on her current world tour [watch below]. In Tel Aviv on May 31, the first showing of the video didn’t go unnoticed: in a montage of images on and around the face of the singer, appears one of National Front President Marine Le Pen, followed by a character resembling Adolf Hitler. But also, and above all, between the eyes of Marine Le Pen, part of whose face is superimposed on Madonna’s, appears, for a very brief moment, a swastika.

Although it isn’t precisely a Nazi swastika, which is clockwise, but rather the classic counter-clockwise (a traditional religious symbol very common in Asia, China in particular), the intent is clear. Especially as Madonna, who converted to a branch of the Hebraic religion Kabala, long ago attacked the extreme French right - and more specifically Jean-Marie Le Pen - whom she associated with Hitler and George W. Bush in a set of images shown on stage during her 2006 tour.

Posted by Worldmeets.US

Saturday night, before 7,000 people gathered at the Stade de France, the singer’s video was played again, unedited, provoking a roar from the crowd when the face of the former candidate for president appeared.

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Before the tour, National Front leaders had threatened to respond. And so it did on Sunday, when a lawyer for the extreme right party, Me Wallerand Saint-Just, sai that, “projecting Marine Le Pen’s image with a swastika is like calling her a Nazi. That must be considered a very serious insult, and looking at the facts, defamation to be more precise.” A complaint will be filed “during the course of the week” in Bobigny, as the alleged offense took place in Seine-Saint-Denis, he added.

Key dates

-- After this concert at the Stade de France, where she performed for the third time in her career, the “Material Girl” will be performing in France again, on August 21 in Nice as part of her “MDNA Tour” which ends in Australia in early 2013.

-- MDNA, her twelfth studio album, released in March, has been somewhat of a disappointment. In France, less than 80,000 copies have been sold, an honorable figure in this time of music industry crisis, but very disappointing for her.

-- In 1987, Madonna launched her panties into the crowd during a concert at the Parc des Sceaux, with President Jacques Chirac in attendance. In 2003, she made headlines again after kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on the mouth at the MTV Video Awards.