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Like A Racist Stone: Bob Dylan Sued For "Racism" By Croatians
By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 1, 2013
Modified Dec 1, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Dec 1, 2013
Modified Dec 1, 2013
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Today is the 58th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, which helped end racism according to the GOP. But racism apparently is not as dead in the rest of the world: a group of Croatians are reportedly suing Bob Dylan for comments he made last year comparing Croatians to Nazis.
The Council of Croats, a Croatian community association based in France, is suing Dylan and Rolling Stone over comments Dylan made to the magazine last year. Dylan had been comparing the 1860s and present-day America when he made the offending remark:
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. 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.
The comment referenced long standing conflict between Catholic Croats and Christian Orthodox Serbs, resulting in a four-year war from 1991 to 1995 during which Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia. During World War II, tens of thousands of Serbs were killed in concentration camps by the Nazi Germany-backed Croatian Ustasha government.
"It is an incitement to hatred. You cannot compare Croatian criminals to all Croats. But we have nothing against Rolling Stone magazine or Bob Dylan as a singer," Vlatko Marić, secretary general of the organization and member of the Croatian World Congress, according to International Business Times.
Officials say it will take 12-18 weeks to investigate the offense. Because of stricter restrictions on freedom of speech in France, Dylan could face a fine if found guilty. We have a feeling we know how he'd reply to these charges.
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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