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DEPICTIONS OF JEWS IN THE SERBIAN PRESS IN CROATIA AT THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY
Mato Artuković
; Hrvatski institut za povijest, Podružnica za povijest Slavonije, Srijema i Baranje, Slavonski Brod, Hrvatska
Sažetak
The major issue shaping Croat-Serb relations in the second half of the 19th century was two opposing concepts of nationalism. Serbs living Croatia advocated the extension of Serbian statehood. This was the root of the Croat-Serb conflict. According to the Serbian press, an important cause of this conflict was the pro-Semitic attitude of the Croats. All of the Serb liberal parties at this time were markedly anti-Semitic. In the struggle for the emancipation of Croatia, the Serb press reported, Jews were fully behind the Croats, and they occupied important positions in Croatian economy, culture, and politics. The Serbian press accused the Jews of pushing politics in Croatia toward the idea of Greater Croatia, and that Jews were taking over the Croatian economy with the blessing of Croats. It claimed that Jews were well-positioned to take advantage of new economic conditions, especially in retailing, and that with the help of their Croatian allies they were squeezing Serbs out of these areas of economic life. The Serbian press constantly accused the Croatian opposition, especially the Party of Right, of unpatriotic sympathies towards the Jews. They claimed Jews were directing Croatian politics against the interests of Serbs and Serbia, and that they were sapping the ‘nation’ principle by promoting cosmopolitanism and ‘decadent’ western culture.
The image of Jews presented by the Serbian press was in moral and physical terms subject to severely negative stereotypes. The Jew is presented as a hideous figure, with a large hook nose, greedy, rapacious eyes, of small stature made grotesque by an abnormally large belly that suffocates everything that comes into contact with it, and a ‘čivutski’ fingernail that drives into Serb wounds. They are rulers of world capital, they control newspapers of international reputation that incite conflict among peoples so that they can profit from these divisions and thereby take control of the whole world. They are the killers of Christ, who according to some far-fetched Serbian ideologues was a Serb, but in no sense was a ‘Čivutin’. Analyzing the Serbian press of the nineteenth century, anti-semitism was not well developed among Croats at this time. The roots of anti-Semitism among Croats have to be sought in a later period.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
208549
URI
Datum izdavanja:
1.12.2001.
Posjeta: 1.381 *