Anti-Serb sentiment

Anti-Serb sentiment (Serbian: антисрпска осећања) or Anti-Serbism (антисрбизам, or антисрпство, "Anti-Serbdom") is negative feeling in general towards Serbs as a group. Historically it has been a basis of persecution of members of the ethnic group. The ostensibly synonymous and controversial term Serbophobia (Србофобија) has more recently been defined as a historic hatred of Serbs.

A distinctive form of Anti-Serbism is Anti-Serbianism that can be defined as negative feeling in general towards Serbia as national state of Serbs, while another form is towards Republika Srpska, the Serb autonomous entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The best-known historic proponent of anti-Serb sentiment was the 19th- and 20th-century Croatian Party of Rights. The most extreme elements of this party became the Ustaše in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a fascist organization that came to power during World War II and instituted racial laws that specifically targeted Serbs, Jews, Roma and dissidents. World War II persecution of Serbs included mass ethnic cleansing of Serbs and other minorities living in 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.

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