Bob Dylan charged with hate crime

No part of that headline is exaggerated. Bob Dylan has been charged with incitement to hatred in France after likening Croatians to Nazis and slave owners of the antebellum South in an interview with the French edition of Rolling Stone.

Dylan got on the subject after the interviewer asked him if he still sees echoes of America's pre-Civil War past in the US today.

"It's like . . . the United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn't give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that's what it really was all about," he said. "This country is just too fucked up about color. It's a distraction. People at each other's throats just because they are of a different color. It's the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back - or any neighborhood back. Or any anything 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." 

Things got a little dicey when Dylan switched to talk of bloodlines and an innate sort of racism detector.

"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."

Croatian radio stations have pulled Dylan's songs in protest and both the Representative Council of Croatian Institutions In France and French judges have filed criminal charges against the singer-songwriter.

Dylan faces fines of over $60,000 and a maximum sentence of a year in prison if found guilty.

(via)