Dylan Honored, Then Charged in France:
In November, the French Minister of culture, a political authority, gave Bob Dylan the Legion d’Honneur.
Meanwhile French JUDICIAL authorities filed preliminary charges against Bob Dylan over a 2012 interview in Rolling Stone magazine. In it the singer briskly compared Croatians to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
If Your Thinking Equals Your Singing, You’ll Be The Phoenix Of The Hosts Of These Woods…
[Dylan proudly exhibiting his Legion d’ Honneur below les ors de la République. Culture minister Aurélie Filippetti, an author, on the right.]
Here is the quote, in context:
“Rolling Stone: Do you see any parallels between the 1860s and present-day America?
Mmm, I don’t know how to put it. 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.
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.
It’s doubtful that America’s ever going to get rid of that stigmatization. It’s a country founded on the backs of slaves. You know what I mean? Because it goes way back. It’s the root cause. If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today. Whoever invented the idea “lost cause . . . .” There’s nothing heroic about any lost cause. No such thing, though there are people who still believe it.”
What’s up with the “blood” thing, Bob? You can “sense the blood”?
Paris prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said Tuesday the charges of “public insult and inciting hate“ were filed.
I approve.
This is an excellent occasion to teach people about insidious, nefarious tribalism. Of the bloody type.
What Dylan was saying is that long term hatred ought to be respected and used as a justification for trans generational hostility from some human groups against other human groups. This is the essence of tribal hatred. (Also known as “racism”.)
Implicitly, Dylan approves of it. I don’t. Nor does, rightly, the French Republic.
That’s one of the reasons I am careful to apply the denomination “Nazi” (say), when many would just write “German”. Confusing Nazis and Germans is insufferable: the present German Republic would have been the best ally of the French republic against the Nazis in 1940 (if you will forgive the chronological mishmash).
The charges stemmed from a lawsuit by a Croatian community group in France. A lawyer for the Council of Croats in France (CRICCF), Ivan Jurasinovic, said they are not seeking monetary damages but only want the legendary singer to apologize to the Croatian people.
I would also insist that Dylan recognizes the error of his tribal ways.
“We have nothing against Rolling Stone magazine or Bob Dylan as a singer,” CRICCF spokesperson Vlatko Maric told the Guardian. “[But] you cannot equate Croatian [war] criminals with all Croats.”
One reason why the case was filed in France: the French Republic has ferocious laws punishing hate speech and racist remarks. Other countries (including the USA) have been slowly following suit.
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Patrice Ayme
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Notes: 1) Dylan condemns the racist ‘insanity’ (about ‘colour’), indeed, & then he engages in it. That’s classical. That’s always how racism happens. But he’ll repent, once what he did will have been explained to him slowly enough, and with enough authority, so that he can understand the full extent of the horror he engaged in.
2) This psycho behavior not only can happen, but is the main source of racism. After all, the Nazis themselves justified they exterminationist ways, by posing like victims of racial discrimination (from their victims!) that they vigorously condemned.
P/S: Dylan was finally exonerated from the charges in June 2014. No doubt he learned his lesson. This being said, the French Justice system can go bananas, and has gone bananas, about stories of bananas and monkeys, precisely. In France, in a blatant show of discrimination, it is against the law to insult a “ministre en exercice“. That turns those civil servants into masters. See:
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 