Bob Dylan Hate Charge against Croats Dismissed

A French court on Wednesday rejected a complaint filed by the Council of Croats in France, CRICCF, after Dylan allegedly compared Croats to Nazis in a 2012 interview in the French issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

The judge ruled that the US singer and songwriter had not given his consent for his comments to be published in the magazine.

In the controversial interview, the 72-year-old musician ruffled feathers in Croatia by comparing Croats to American White supremacists and German Nazis in the course of a discourse on American politics.

Commenting on still tense relations between African Americans and Whites, Dylan said: "If you’ve got a slave master or the [Klu Klux] Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that ... Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood."

The comment about Croats drew numerous comments on websites, prompting some to accuse the musician of not knowing much about history and politics in the Balkans.

Dylan held two concerts in Belgrade, one in 1991 and the other one in 2010. Two years ago, Dylan also staged a concert in Zagreb.