Bob Dylan Charged for 'Inciting Hate'

Updated Dec. 3, 2013 8:31 p.m. ET

A July 2012 file photo shows singer-songwriter Bob Dylan performing on stage in Carhaix, western France. Associated Press

PARIS—French magistrates have pressed preliminary charges against Bob Dylan, a poster child of the American civil-rights movement, for allegedly violating antidiscrimination laws in a 2012 magazine interview in which he appears to compare Croatians to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
The probe is a turn of fortune for the iconic American singer in France, where just three weeks ago he was awarded the country’s highest cultural award, the Légion d’honneur.
Preliminary charges of “public insult and inciting hate” were filed against Mr. Dylan on Nov. 11, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday. That was two days before he was honored by France’s culture minister, who called the singer “a hero for young people hungry for justice and independence.”
The charges against Mr. Dylan, 72 years old, stem from a complaint by a Croatian organization in France, which claims comments by the singer in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine constitute an insult and provocation to racial or ethnic hatred.
Mr. Dylan—who hails from northern Minnesota, home to a sizable Croatian population when he was growing up— spoke at length in the interview about the issue of race in America, calling it “the height of insanity” that will hold any nation back.
“Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery—that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke…, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that,” Mr. Dylan was quoted as saying.
“If you got a slave master or 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.”
A representative of Mr. Dylan couldn’t be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for Rolling Stone magazine declined to comment.
“I am surprised a man like Bob Dylan would make such comments,” said Vlatko Maric, general secretary of the French branch of the Croatian World Congress. Mr. Maric said his group would withdraw the complaint if Mr. Dylan apologizes.
Croats are sensitive to any comparison with the Nazis because of mass killings of Serbs, Jews and others by the so-called Independent State of Croatia—which was allied with Nazi Germany—during World War II. Many Croats were also killed at the hands of Serbian militias.
Meanwhile, Croatia and Serbia were also bitter enemies in the 1990s war in the former Yugoslavia.
Accusations of using speech to incite hatred when filed to prosecutors in France automatically are referred to investigating magistrates, who then usually send those cases to trial after checking the authenticity of the litigious comments and the legitimacy of the plaintiff.
Frederic Pichon, a Paris-based lawyer who specializes in press law, said convictions for such charges typically are limited to fines of a few thousand euros.
Write to Inti Landauro at inti.landauro@wsj.com

Excerpt from: Bob Dylan Charged for ‘Inciting Hate’