French Court Dismisses Hate Speech Case Against Bob Dylan

The preliminary charge brought against Bob Dylan in Paris for what a Croatian organization said was hate speech comparing Croats to Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan has been dropped by a French court.

The charge was filed by the French government after the Representative Council of the Croatian Community and Institutions in France complained about comments Dylan made in a September 2012 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

In the interview Dylan was discussing racism in the United States, and noted that American blacks could sense whether whites had slave-master blood “just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.” At the time, Ivan Jurasinovic, a lawyer for the organization, said that the French Croats were not seeking money or punishment, but hoped that Dylan, whom he described as “a singer who is liked and respected in Croatia,” would apologize.

But it was not quite that simple: under French hate speech laws, he could have been sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of up to €45,000 ($62,000). The case was dismissed on a technicality: Dylan, the judge ruled, had not authorized the publication of the comments in France.