Bob Dylan ‘racial hate’ charges dropped
A French judge has dismissed the charges that Bob Dylan “incited racial hate” by making a comparison between Croatians and Nazis in an interview with Rolling Stone, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Prosecutors are now said to be pursuing the magazine’s French publisher, Michel Birnbaum, for his decision to print the inflammatory remarks.
Dylan had been charged with public insult and promoting racial hate following a complaint by a Croatian community organisation. Though the suit corresponded to an interview published more than a year earlier, it was filed in November 2013, just two days before he was due to receive the Légion d’Honneur.
Dylan’s comments stemmed from a question about the impact of racism in the US. “Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery,” he was quoted as saying. “If you got a slave master or [Ku Klux] Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”
According to the AFP, a judge ruled on 14 April that Dylan had not given his consent for his Rolling Stone statements to be published in France, where anti-hate legislation is stringent. Prosecutors have filed anti-discrimination charges against Birnbaum, the Wall Street Journal reported, and the publisher could now face up to a year in jail. “I am very happy to see that French justice understood that Bob Dylan never wanted to insult anyone,” said the singer’s lawyer, Thierry Marembert.
Last month, producer T Bone Burnett announced plans for a set of unreleased Bob Dylan lyrics to be reimagined as new songs by Elvis Costello, Mumford and Sons and other artists. Another unfinished Dylan tune, Dirty Lie, was released this week as recorded by Laura and Lydia Rogers, aka the Secret Sisters. “It was the weirdest thing ever to even be considered to finish it in a way that even remotely measures up to what [Dylan] is known for,” Laura Rogers told Rolling Stone. “[But the song] really spoke to us.”
Source: The Guardian
