Madonna's Swastika Swipe May Actually Help France's Marine Le Pen
A Madonna concert video featuring Marine Le Pen's face with a swastika on it generates a law suit from the extreme right National Front party, and unease that the pop star went too far with her Nazi association.
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From Left: Madonna; Marine Le Pen.
Its the Material Girl versus the bad girl of French politics.
On July 15 officials for extreme-right leader Marine Le Pens National Front (FN) announced the party has decided to sue Madonna for using an image of Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead during a July 14 Paris concert. The move came after the pop divas July 14 show in Paris beamed a video featuring morphing facial images, including one of Le Pen with a swastika superimposed on it. That then melted into a shot of a Hitler look-alike. The segment also contained imagery of other world leaders the singer presumably has problems with, such as Pope Benedict, Sarah Palin, Hu Jintao and Hosni Mubarak. Le Pen had first caught wind of the morphing video after it was used during a May performance in Israel. If she tries that in France, well see what happens, Le Pen said, threatening litigationthen ! speculat ing about Madonnas motives for using her unflatteringly enhanced photo. Its understandable ageing singers who need publicity go to such extremes. (Le Pen, 43, is ten years younger than Madonna.)
But if the singer gets mostly applause from international audiences who identify Le Pen as Europes best-known face of xenophobic right-wing politics, she may find herself with fewer allies in France as a result of associating Le Pen with Nazism. The reason? Though Le Pen presides over a reactionary and Islamophobic party, shes also clearly not a fascist, not a Nazi and not Hitler. In fact, shes not even her father, Jean-Marie Le Penwho made revisionist comments and anti-Semitic statements part of his notorious public discourse. Comparisons of Le Pen and her party to her fathers rule over the FN not only leave many people in France feeling Madonnas jab misunderstands Marines relatively moderate positioning but even victimizes her with an unfair association with the Nazi symbol.
Indeed, since becoming FN leader in January, 2011 the younger Le Pen has angered many party veterans and traditionalists by expelling groups and individuals associated with extremism and neo-Nazi sympathies. According to those detractors, Le Pen is selling out many of the ultra-right tenets and currents that her father built the party with in her quest to make it more respectable.
And thats what makes her a viable danger to the French political mainstream. With her brand of reactionary lite, Le Pen now threatens to reach millions of voters who previously shunned her fathers FN as neo-fascist. By attacking Marine Le Pen with a powerful but inappropriate symbol, Madonna may have offended more than just the 6.4 million people who cast ballots for Le Pen during Frances first round of presidential polling. We cant! accept this despicable association, declared FN vice-president Florian Philippot in announcing the decision to file suit. Marine Le Pen (will) defend her own honor, but also those of (party) members, supporters, and millions of National Front voters.
While no one outside of the FNpundits, politicians, or legal expertshas stepped up to defend Frances iconic reactionary against the pop queens swipe, an uneasy ambivalence emerged when Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, spokeswoman of Frances leftist government, said it was unfortunate that Le Pen was associated the Nazi symbol.
What happens now? Should the court case against Madonna be heard and ruled in Le Pens favor quickly, the singer could be fined and forced to edit out the offending images from her other French concert in Nice on Aug. 21. More likely, experts say, the suit will take longer to come to trial, and the court is likely to accept Madonnas anticipated arguments that the video is an artistic expression covered by freedom of speech statues.
Yet even is she loses that case, Le Pen looks likely to come out ahead in terms of French public sympathy. If Madonnas objective was to discredit Le Pen with the virtual swastika tattoo, the actual result for the FN leader may be a publicity windfall.