Anti Serb sentiment

19th and early 20th century in Austro-Hungarian Croatia

Tension first appeared between Croatia and Serbian with the nation-building process of the mid-19th century. Serbian minister Ilija Garašanin's Načertanije (1844). claimed that lands inhabited by Bulgarians, Macedonians, Albanians, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Hungarians and Croats were in fact all part of Greater Serbia. Garašanin's plan also included ways to spread Serbian influence in the lands he claimed. He proposed ways to influence the Croats, whom Garašanin regarded as "Serbs of Catholic faith". This plan considered the peoples surrounding devoid of national consciousness. Vuk Karadžić in the 1850s also denied the existence of Croatians and Croatian language as a part of Shtokavian, counting them as "Catholic Serbs" and relegating "Croatian" to Chakavian only. Croatia was at the time a part of the Kingdom of Hungary (Habsburg), an integral part of the Habsburg Monarchy, and Dalmatia and Istria separate Habsburg crown lands. Ante Starčević, head of the Croatian Party of Rights, proved that Croats and Croatia did exist and reciprocated by denying the existence of Serbia. After Austro-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 and the Serbia gained independence, Croatian and Serbian relations deteriorated, as both sides had pretensions on Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1902 major anti-Serb riots in Croatia were caused by Croatian Serbs' newspapers reprinting of an article from Belgrade newspapers titled Do istrage vaše ili naše (Till the Destruction, ours or yours), denying the existence of the Croat nation and forecasting the result of the "inevitable" Serbian-Croatian conflict.

That combat has to be led till the destruction, either ours or yours. One side must succumb. That side will be Croatians, due to their minority, geographical position, mingling with Serbs and because the process of evolution means Serbhood is equal to progress.

Anti-Serbian sentiment coalesced in 19th century Croatia when some of the Croatian intelligentsia planned the creation of a Croatian nation-state. Ante Starčević, the leader of the Party of Rights between 1851 and 1896, believed Croats should confront their neighbors, including Serbs. He wrote, for example, that Serbs were an "unclean race" and with co-founder of his party, Eugen Kvaternik, denied the existence of Serbs or Slovenes in Croatia, seeing their political consciousness as a threat. During the 1850s Starčević forged the term Slavoserb (Latin: sclavus, servus) to describe people supposedly ready to serve foreign rulers, initially used to refer to some Serbs and his Croat opponent and later applied to all Serbs by his followers. The Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 probably contributed to the development of Starčević's anti-Serb sentiment: He believed that it increased chances for the creation of Greater Croatia. David Bruce MacDonald, however, has explained Starčević's theories could only justify ethnocide but not genocide because Starčević intended to assimilate Serbs as "Orthodox Croats", and not to exterminate them.

Starčević's ideas formed a basis for the destructive politics of his successor, Josip Frank, who led numerous anti-Serbian incidents. Under Frank's leadership the Party of Rights became obsessively anti-Serb, and such sentiments were predominant in Croatian political life in the 1880s. British historian C. A. Macartney stated that because of the "gross intolerance" toward Serbs who lived in Slavonia, they had to seek protection from Count Károly Khuen-Héderváry, the Ban of Croatia-Slavonia, in 1883. During his reign in 1883-1903, Hungary stimulated division and hatred between Serbs and Croats to further its Magyarization policy. Carmichael writes that ethnic division between the Croats and the Serbs at the turn of the 20th century was stoked by a nationalist press and was "incubated entirely in the minds of extremists and fanatics, with little evidence that the areas in which Serbs and Croats had lived for many centuries in close proximity, such as Krajina, were more prone to ethnically inspired violence."

Between the mid-19th and early 20th century there were two factions in the Catholic Church in Croatia: the progressive faction which preferred uniting Croatia with Serbia in a progressive Slavic country, and the conservative faction that opposed this. The conservative faction became dominant by the end of the 19th century: The First Croatian Catholic Congress held in Zagreb in 1900 was unreservedly Serbophobic and anti-Orthodox.

The term Serbophobe was used in literary and cultural circles before World War I. Croatian writers Antun Gustav Matoš and Miroslav Krleža casually described some political and cultural figures as "Serbophobes" (Krleža in the four-volume Talks with Miroslav Krleža, 1985, edited by Enes Čengić; they perceived an anti-Serbian animus in a person's behavior.

Ottoman Macedonia

The Society Against Serbs was a Bulgarian nationalist organization, established in 1897 in Sofia, Principality of Bulgaria. The organization's activists were both "Centralists" and "Vrhovnists" of the Bulgarian revolutionary committees (the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee), and had by 1902 murdered at least 43 and wounded 52, owners of Serbian schools, teachers, Serbian Orthodox clergy, and other notable Serbs in the Ottoman Empire. Bulgarians also used the term "Serbomans" for Serbs in Macedonia.

World War I

After the Balkan Wars in 1912—1913, anti-Serb sentiment increased in the Austro-Hungarian administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Oskar Potiorek, governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, closed many Serb societies and significantly contributed to the anti-Serb mood before the outbreak of World War I.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg in 1914 led to the Anti-Serb pogrom in Sarajevo, where angry Croats and Muslims engaged in violence during the evening of 28 June and much of the day on 29 June. This led to a deep division along ethnic lines unprecedented in the city's history. Ivo Andrić refers to this event as the "Sarajevo frenzy of hate." The crowds directed their anger principally at Serb shops, residences of prominent Serbs, the Serbian Orthodox Church, schools, banks, the Serb cultural society Prosvjeta, and the Srpska riječ newspaper offices. Two Serbs were killed that day. That night there were anti-Serb riots in other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire including Zagreb and Dubrovnik. In the aftermath of the Sarajevo assassination anti-Serb sentiment ran high throughout the Habsburg Empire. Austria-Hungary imprisoned and extradited around 5,500 prominent Serbs, sentenced 460 to death, and established the predominantly Muslim special militia Schutzkorps which carried on the persecution of Serbs.

The Sarajevo assassination became the casus belli for World War I. Taking advantage of an international wave of revulsion against this act of "Serbian nationalist terrorism," Austria-Hungary gave Serbia an ultimatum which led to World War I. Although the Serbs of Austria-Hungary were loyal citizens whose majority participated in its forces during the war, anti-Serb sentiment systematically spread and members of the ethnic group were persecuted all over the country. Austria-Hungary soon occupied the territory of the Kingdom of Serbia, including Kosovo, boosting already intense anti-Serbian sentiment among Albanians whose volunteer units were established to reduce the number of Serbs in Kosovo. A cultural example is the jingle "Alle Serben müssen sterben" ("All Serbs Must Die"), which was popular in Vienna in 1914. (It was also known as "Serbien muß sterbien").

Orders issued on the 3rd and 13 October 1914 banned the use of Serbian Cyrillic in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, limiting it to use in religious instruction. A decree was passed on January 3, 1915, that banned Serbian Cyrillic completely from public use. An imperial order in October 25, 1915, banned the use of Serbian Cyrillic in the Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, except "within the scope of Serb Orthodox Church authorities".

Interwar period

A 1993 study made in the United States stated that Belgrade's centralist policies for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia led to increased anti-Serbian sentiment in Croatia.

World War II

Anti-Serb sentiment increasingly infiltrated into German Nazi ideology after Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor in 1933. The roots can be found in his early life in Vienna, and when he was informed about the Yugoslav coup d'état conducted by a group of pro-Western Serb officers in March 1941, he decided to punish all Serbs as the main enemies of his new Nazi order. The ministry of Joseph Goebbels, with the support of the Bulgarian, Italian, and Hungarian press, was given the task of stimulating anti-Serb sentiment among Croats, Slovenians and Hungarians. The propaganda of the Axis powers accused the group of persecution of minorities and the establishment of the concentration camps for ethnic Germans in order to justify an attack on Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany as a force which would save the Yugoslavian people from Serb nationalism. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded again and occupied by Axis powers.

The Axis occupation of Serbia enabled the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist and terrorist organization, to follow their extreme anti-Serbian ideology in the Independent State of Croatia. Their anti-Serb sentiment was racist and genocidal. The new Croatian government adopted racial laws, similar to those in Nazi Germany, aimed at Jews, Roma people and Serbs, who were all defined as "aliens outside the national community" and persecuted throughout World War II throughout the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Between 100,000 and 700,000 Serbs were killed in Croatia by the Ustaše and their Axis allies. Overall, the number of Serbs killed in World War II in Yugoslavia was about 350,000, the majority massacred by various fascist forces.

Some priests of the Croatian Catholic Church participated in these Ustaša massacres and the mass conversion of Serbs to Catholicism. During the war, about 250,000 people of Orthodox faith that were living within the territory of the NDH were either forced or coerced into converting to Catholicism by the Ustaša authorities. One of the reasons for the close cooperation of the part of Catholic clergy was their anti-Serb position.

After World War II

Nearly four decades later, in the 1986 draft of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, concern was expressed that Serbophobia, together with other things, could provoke the restoration of Serbian nationalism with dangerous consequences. The 1987 Yugoslav economic crisis, and different opinions within Serbia and other republics about what were the best ways to resolve it, exacerbated growing anti-Serbian sentiment among non-Serbs, but also enhanced Serbian support for Serbian nationalism.

Breakup of Yugoslavia

During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s anti-Serb sentiment flooded Croatia and Kosovo, and because of its independence and historical association with Serbophobia, the Independent State of Croatia would sometimes serve as rallying symbol for people who intended to proclaim aversion toward Serbia. It also worked vice versa. And while Serbian nationalism of the time is well-known, anti-Serb sentiment was present among all non-Serb nations of Yugoslavia during its breakup.

In 1997 the FR Yugoslavia submitted claims to the International Court of Justice that Bosnia and Herzegovina was responsible for the acts of genocide committed against the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been incited by anti-Serb sentiment and rhetoric communicated through all forms of the media. For example, The Novi Vox, a Muslim youth paper, published a poem titled "Patriotic Song" with the following verses: "Dear mother, I'm going to plant willows; We'll hang Serbs from them; Dear mother, I'm going to sharpen knives; We'll soon fill pits again." The paper Zmaj od Bosne published an article with a sentence saying "Each Muslim must name a Serb and take oath to kill him." The radio station Hajat broadcast "public calls for the execution of Serbs."

Outside the Balkans, Noam Chomsky observed that not just the government of Serbia, but also the people, were reviled and threatened. He described the jingoism as "a phenomenon I have not seen in my lifetime since the hysteria whipped up about 'the Japs' during World War II".

At a 2012 book signing in Prague, Madeleine Albright, the United States Secretary of State during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, received backlash from a pro-Serbian Czech organization whose protesters carried photos of Serbian victims of the Kosovo War. She was filmed responding to them with, "disgusting Serbs, get out!"

Contemporary and recent issues

The current UK "Leave Europe" campaign includes explicitly anti-Serbian sentiment. It is based on the UK Defence Minister's remarks concerning Serbia.

Srbe na vrbe

The slogan Srbe na vrbe!, meaning "Hang Serbs from the willow trees!" (literally, "Serbs on the willows!") originates from a poem by the Slovene politician Marko Natlačen published in 1914, at the beginning of the Austria-Hungarian war against Serbia. It was popularized before World War II by Mile Budak, the chief architect of Ustaše ideology against Serbs. During World War II there were mass hangings of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia as part of the Ustaše persecution of the Serbs.

In present-day Croatia, Croatian neo-Nazis, extreme nationalists and people who oppose the return of Serb refugees often use the slogan. Graffiti with the phrase is common, and was noted in the press when it was found painted on a church in 2004, 2006, and on another church in 2008. In 2010, a banner displaying the slogan appeared in the midst of tourist season at the entrance to Split, a major tourist hub in Croatia, during a Davis Cup tennis match between the two countries. It was removed by police within hours, and the banner's creator was later apprehended and charged with a felony.

Za dom spremni

Za dom spremni! is a salute that causes controversy because of its use during World War II by the Ustaše movement. It was their equivalent of the Nazi salute Sieg Heil.

The words Za dom ("For home" or "For homeland") were originally used in the 19th century by Count Josip Jelačić. When he went into battle, he would say "For home!" and the army would reply "ready to die!".

In 2011, a court in Knin dismissed a case against a craftsman who sold souvenirs labelled with Za dom spremni, ruling that the defendant didn't wear clothing or souvenirs with slogan that encourage national, racial or religious hatred, but instead he was selling them. While the former is punishable by law, the latter is not. The court ruling stated that "Za dom spremni is an old Croatian salute known throughout history" as a part of the defense statement, yet it didn't cite any opinion on the subject. On 19 November 2013, Croatian international football player Josip Šimunić led the chant with the crowd answering in Zagreb after Croatia beat Iceland to qualify for the 2014 World Cup finals. He was subsequently fined by FIFA and banned for ten matches, effectively banning him from the tournament, and also fined for hate speech by Croatian prosecutors.

Derogatory terms for Serbs

Far-right controversy on the Croatian Wikipedia

During 2013, there was a debate on the Croatian Wikipedia regarding its bias against Serbs and certain other national minorities such as Jews and Roma. Both regular users and administrators were reported to have participated in the breach of neutrality. Croatian minister Željko Jovanović publicly condemned it, and voiced his concerns about that young people in Croatia were exposed to historical revisionism and falsehoods. Historian Snježana Koren also examined the contents of the Croatian Wikipedia, and concluded that the ulterior motive of these writings was to rehabilitate the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of Nazi Germany, and that "there (was) no other way to characterize such efforts than as Ustaše movement"

Criticism and controversy

The description of Serbophobia has been controversial, as some sources state it runs contrary to the facts. Some controversy with the term purportedly corresponds to its interplay with perceived historical revisionism practiced by the government of Slobodan Milošević in the 1990s and its later apologists, and the contention that Serbian writers constructed the "myth of Serbophobia," as "an anti-Semitism for Serbs, making them victims throughout history." According to MacDonald, in the 1980s Serbs increasingly began to compare themselves to Jews as fellow victims in world history, which involved tragedising historic events, from the 1389 Battle of Kosovo to the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution, as every aspect of history was seen as yet another example of persecution and victimisation of Serbs at the hands of external negative forces. The association with Jewish suffering is probably linked to the Croatian death camp, Jasenovac where it is estimated that 50,000 Serbs were killed in extremely cruel circumstances, along with fellow inmates who were Jews and Roma. The disputed historical facts of the camp are the subject of allegations of "Holocaust Denial" by the Croatian authorities.

Critics associate the use of the term Serbophobia with the politics of Serbian nationalist victimization of the late 1980s and 1990s as described, for example, by former director of the International Crisis Group in the Balkans, Christopher Bennett. According to Bennett, the idea of historic Serb martyrdom grew out of the thinking and writing of Dobrica Ćosić who developed a complex and paradoxical theory of Serb national persecution, which evolved over two decades between the late 1960s and the late 1980s into the Greater Serbian programme. Serbian nationalist politicians have made associations to Serbian "martyrdom" in history (from the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 to the genocide during World War II) to justify Serbian politics of the 1980s and 1990s; these associations were exemplified in Slobodan Milošević's Gazimestan speech at Kosovo Polje in 1989. The reaction to this speech as well as to the use of the associated term Serbophobia remains a matter of heated debate.

In late 1988, months before the Revolutions of 1989, Milošević accused his critics like the Slovenian leader Milan Kučan of "spreading fear of Serbia" as a political tactic. Political scientist David Bruce MacDonald stated that Serbophobia was often likened to anti-Semitism, and expressed itself as a re-analysis of history where every event that had a negative effect on the Serbs was likened to a tragedy, and used to justify territorial expansion into neighbouring regions.