US pop queen Madonna praised France for its tolerance and welcoming attitude to minorities and said she knew far-right leader Marine Le Pen was “very angry with me” over a provocative video.
“I know that I have made a certain Marine Le Pen very angry with me. It’s not my intention to make enemies,” Madonna told 2,700 fans at a sell-out concert at the Olympia hall in Paris on Thursday.
France’s far-right National Front said earlier this month it would sue the singer over a video at an earlier Paris concert showing party leader Le Pen with a swastika on her forehead.
The video, which served as a backdrop for Madonna’s performance of the song “Nobody Knows Me,” flashed a picture of Le Pen’s forehead superimposed with a swastika, followed by an image resembling Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Madonna went on to praise France for its tolerance and the welcome it had extended to black entertainers.
“Before the civil rights in America, African American artists were not allowed to perform in America … but France opened their arms to them, Josephine Baker, Charlie Parker … people of colour, people with difference, minorities felt welcome in France,” she said.
“If we don’t learn from history we will just repeat it. So the next time you want to point the finger at somebody and blame them for the problems in your life take that finger and point it back at you.”
Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, star of Roman Polanski’s “The Ghost Writer” and a former James Bond incarnation, was among the fans cheering the US pop icon.
“We know her, my wife wanted to come so we bought tickets,” Brosnan told AFP.
Brosnan was in Paris for “Love Punch,” a film with Emma Thompson being shot in the French capital.
Madonna wrote and performed the title song for the 2002 Bond film “Die Another Day” starring Brosnan and Halle Berry.
The singer performed for just an hour at the Olympia hall, drawing boos when the curtain went down.
